Primeval Discovery
by Vipaka
Summary: Three archeologists uncover something unbelievable while surveying the jungle of Colombia. As they seek answers, the truth unfolds in a way that none of them could have ever predicted. U/M M for adult themes and content
1. Chapter 1

A dark haired man pushed aside a leafy branch of Cyrilla, stepping over a lichen-encrusted rock as he continued on his way. He ruthlessly pushed a wayward bang out of his eyes, his skin so sticky from the moisture that saturated the jungle that it stuck to the side of his head. In the canopy overhead a particularly raucous Sunbittern was making itself heard as the insects painted the air their own tune. As the man reached to push another stalk away, he paused to pluck a fallen fruit off the ground from beside it. Inspecting the fruit for damage, he took a generous bite and continued deeper into the heart of the primeval forest.

Seeing a red tag tied to a branch up ahead, he slowed down with a smile. He could hear voices up ahead. "Miss me?" he called. From behind a tree a head of cropped blue hair poked out, waving to him.

"Mamoru, where have you been!" A beautiful japanese woman emerged from a few yards away, holding more of the red tags in her hands, which were both set on her hips. "Do you even know how dangerous it is out here?" Her waist-length hair seemed to swell with her temper, despite the oppressive heat and humidity.

Mamoru put his hands up to shield himself from anger that was coming off the woman in waves. "It's hot enough to bake a monkey out here sorry, Rei, Ami," he gave a nod to the blue-haired woman, "it took me a little longer than expected to find my way back, but it was worth it." Reaching into the pocket of his tool belt, he pulled forth a shard or broken pottery. "I found this about two grids east, it has part of the language painted onto it!"

Ami stood up as Rei rushed over, both of them focused entirely on the piece of ceramic, although Rei smacked the back of Mamoru's head for good measure. "I think you're right!" Ami said, an excited light in her eyes. "This could be our first break! If I can prove this isn't from a native or ancestral dialect known to this area, you might be able to get enough funding to set up an excavation site!"

Rei tossed her dank hair over her shoulder, where it hung limp behind her. "Where did you get that fruit?" Mamoru gave her a sheepish smile. "It better have been on the ground, or else I'll-"

"It was, it was!" Mamoru took another bite. "I swear," he said around a mouthful.

"Next time you're late, we really will leave you." She turned to disappear back into the foliage. Mamoru could see a glimpse of a native on the other side of the tree.

"That translator is still hanging around?" he asked, sitting down beside Ami as she settled back in to examining the shapes of the rocks on the ground, which were distinctly pointed like arrowheads. She was rifling through her backpack, bubblewrapping and ziplocking artifacts they'd discovered earlier.

"Alejandro," Ami put emphasis on the name, "will be around until he's sure we aren't here to further any political unrest," Ami confirmed.

"And here I thought he was just sticking around to try and get into Rei's pants," Mamoru joked. "Its not like we've seen anyone who speaks anything other than chirps and squacks for miles."

"Rei knows we're just here to survey. She wouldn't get into a relationship that quickly anyways." Mamoru tried not to smile at Ami's inability to detect his dry sarcasm.

"Oh that's right " he drawled with a sly smile, reaching down to begin rolling up the leg of his pants. "Something bit me on the way back there "

"What!" Ami turned all her attention to his leg, searching for the bite wound. "What bit you? Did you bring it back with you? Are you experiencing double vision, headache, nausea?" She put a hand to his forehead. "Oh my, you're burning up!"

Mamoru bubbled over laughing. "Oh Ami, you're too easy."

Ami frowned, biting her lip. "Hysteria, fever "

"Nothing bit me!" He confessed. "I was just yanking your chain."

"But your skin felt "

"And I'm sure yours is equally hot. Its sweltering out here, I feel like I'm taking a shower." He raised a hand to fan his face.

"You shouldn't tease about things like that," Ami scolded, although Mamoru could see a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "I'm here in case anyone needs medical attention, and it's not a joke!" She cut him off before he could laugh again. "This jungle is teeming with poisonous flora and fauna. You and Rei are lucky to have someone with my unique expertise in prehistorical archeology, linguistics, AND medical training available to help you with your survey."

"Lucky for me you're Rei's best friend." Ami shot him a stern look. "I know, it won't happen again," Mamoru couldn't help adding, "mom."

Ami gave him a reprimanding glare but Mamoru could still see her lips twitching towards a smile.

"So what have you and Rei unearthed while I was gone?"

"A few artifacts, mostly stone. Rei found some broken jewelry an hour ago."  
>Ami glanced back at the rocks. "What I want to know is where is the rest of it?" she asked, still talking towards the ground.<p>

"Probably buried six strata beneath us. Time has a way of layering and eroding things into nothingness."

"I hope there is some of the actual architecture left there are so many artifacts scattered all across this area." Ami sounded wistful, and Mamoru put a consoling hand on her shoulder.

"Let's not get too carried away. The chances of us finding any ruins are slim to none, and we still haven't carbon dated any of these relics. They could be leftovers from the indigenous people living in this area for all we know. We won't know until we get them back to the lab, and that is a few continents away." Glancing down, Mamoru's eye caught on a strand of animal fur by the roots of the tree. "That's not from anything territorial, is it?"

Ami glanced at the hair, tugging on it till it was free from the dirt. Mamoru watched as the hair stretched longer and longer, still half buried in sediment. Ami's expression was as baffled as his as she continued to pull on the hair.

Rei came back over towards the other two, bending over see what the other two were so focused on. As Alejandro followed her, Rei shooed him away, much to Mamoru's amusement.

"What could possibly have grown hair this long?" Mamoru looked at the loops of it Ami held in her hands. "Is it a root from the tree?"

Ami shook her head. "No this hair is too fine. And the texture is wrong." She examined the metallic red color on the fur as she brushed the grunge off the brittle hair. "If I didn't know better "

Rei was suddenly completely focused on that one hair. "You don't think " Mamoru could hear the feverish excitement beginning to creep into her voice.

"No," Ami dismissed her. "Its likely just from a primate or other human that's been through this area, anything else would have been degraded down to nothing from erosion without protection by now. But lets take it back with us to test it, just in case." She tugged on the hair again, gathering it in her palm as more of it was freed from the dirt.

"How much of this is there?" Mamoru put the husk of his fruit on the ground, and sunk his hand into the soil, only to discover another three brittle hairs. "Ami "

"If its a body, we have to report it." Rei wet her lips, mouth suddenly dry. "Its not like it's unheard of for people to get killed down here, for one reason or another."

"We're not reporting anything until we know what it is," Mamoru said, glancing up to make sure Alejandro was still a safe distance away.

"Rei, go distract the translator while we unearth whatever is buried here."

"Excuse you-"

"This isn't up for discussion!" He said in an angry hush. "We'll deal with whatever it is, but if it is a body, I don't want him to notify anyone before we do." Rei crossed her arms over her chest, spun on her heel and stomped away.

"We're just archeologists, we're not police" Ami said, brows knit. "Maybe we should leave this to the local authorities, in case we contaminate any evidence "

"This is the thick of the jungle in the middle of Colombia. Somehow, I don't think they'll be using forensic analysis to determine cause of death."

Ami nodded, and set down the hair she'd gathered so she could begin parting the dirt with both hands. Mamoru glanced back over his shoulder to make sure Rei was still keeping the translator occupied and away from them as they dug.

"Look at all these hairs jesus," Mamoru pushed another clump of hair aside. "This had to be a human. No primate grows hairs this long. Its almost like they're growing out of the tree itself," Mamoru followed the path of the hairs to the base of the tree. "Maybe someone made a grave here before the tree was planted."

Ami craned her neck upward to try and see the top of the tree. "Not likely."

"We're going to have to dig into it sideways from the roots. Rei would never forgive me, if we ended up harming the precious ecosystem here." Ami nodded in agreement.

They dug for several long minutes while Rei led the translator and guide further away from the site. The closer to the rhizome they got, the more hairs they uncovered in various states of decay.

"This is too much hair for one body. This could be serialized killing burial site," Ami suggested, a hint of alarm coloring her voice.

"Or ritualistic," Mamoru suggested, unwilling to give up the hope they might uncover some organic remains of a prehistorical human.

"What is that?" Ami said, lifting a root as gingerly as she could from its entrenchment. She covered her mouth in horror.

"Looks like another root," Mamoru noted, reaching out to pull the root from the soil. Ami grabbed his hand as he got closer, shaking her head no.

He looked closer, and saw why Ami had stopped digging.

Entwined with the roots of the tree, buried several feet in the dirt and covered in fungus and blood from where the root had been removed was a human hand.

"God..." Mamoru breathed.

"We have to keep digging. Whoever died here they need to be put to rest properly." Ami reached a trembling hand out to begin untangling the digits from the roots. That was when she screamed.

"What! Ami are you alright?" Mamoru took Ami by the shoulders, inspecting her for injury.

Ami was shivering from head to toe, her breathing shallow and her eyes wide with disbelief. "It it moved."

"What?" Mamrou felt himself tense as every zombie movie he'd ever seen danced before him. Then he remembered reality, and relaxed. "A little revenge for earlier? I never knew you were such a good actress." He released her shoulders. "You've made your point though, I won't trick you again."

He turned back to the hand, using a brush from his toolkit to sweep the soil off the fingers. The nails were impossibly caked with grime and the trail of fungi and tendrils of the tree had grown into the interior of the flesh. "What kind of sick person would kill someone so young " he looked at the length of the fingers again, pressing his lips together and setting the brush aside to begin digging again.

Ami gathered herself, shaking her head. "I felt it move, I thought I did." She put a hand to her head, closing her eyes. "The heat must be getting to me," she admitted. "Or maybe just the situation."

Mamoru half-nodded in her direction, already halfway up the arm in his efforts to uncover the body. "Its okay Ami. There were a few minutes while I tried to find my way back earlier that I thought I'd die out here. Something about this place " He lifted the limp hand by the elbow, propping it up on a rock as he dug further into the tree. "I'll be glad when we're out of here."

Ami nodded, moving to the other side of Mamoru to search for the other arm.

"How old do you think they were?" Mamoru wondered aloud. "They couldn't have been more than 12 when they died."

"I won't know until I see the condition of the rest of the body, but I'd actually say its more likely based on the length of the forearm to be someone in their late-teens." Ami pulled another clump of roots from the soil, revealing another hand.

"A matching set," Mamoru tried to lighten the atmosphere, checking that the size and pallor matched with the first hand. "Well at least we know there wasn't a serial killing."

"One small positi-" Ami froze mid sentence, eyes bulging. Mamoru watched in disbelief as the foot she'd found tried to kick itself free of dirt.

"IT'S A ZOMBIE!" He didn't even have time to register that the ridiculous words had escaped from his head and exited out his mouth before the noise from them silenced all surrounding wildlife. As he turned to bolt, Ami grabbed his ankle, effectively tripping him into the dirt.

"There is no such thing as a zombie," she said, watching frozen as the second leg loosed itself from being entrenched in the tree's lower half. "Clearly whatever happened here wasn't a murder. Look, we need to get them out before they suffocate."

Against his better judgement, Mamoru turned to see what Ami was talking about. "You see this skin-pallor?" she said, gesturing to a patch of only moderately dirtied flesh while she worked to free the second leg which was tangled in several roots. "Whoever is buried here hasn't even begun to deteriorate. Their epithelial tissue is fully intact. I don't know how they survived so long out in the jungle like this, but if we don't hurry and get them out, I can guarantee they will die."

With renewed vigor, Ami began pulling roots away from the body, uncovering a hip, and then a shoulder. They dug and dug, and the body flailed against them, desperate and frenzied as it tried to free itself. Ami peeled back a piece of the tree's bark and tossed it aside, revealing the crown of a silver-haired head. Mamoru joined in, only realizing once they had almost fully uncovered the body that the very female figure inside the tree was very naked.

Averting his eyes, he couldn't help but sneak a glance as he pulled off his shirt and held it out for Ami to use to protect the girl's modesty. Ami continued to disentangle plants from the girl's limbs and torso while Mamoru focused on cracking the tree open wide enough to free her head.

With a lurching gasp, a face broke through the splintered heartwood at the base of the tree. Wild eyes stared at nothing, limbs still spiraling in panicked patterns. Spitting out dirt, wood and sap the girl bent forward, heaving on the ground as she struggled to take in air. The shirt Ami had draped over her front section fell onto the fresh earth as she rasped and choked.

"Ami do something!" Mamoru picked up the shirt, hanging it off her shoulder like a sleeve and forcing himself not to overreact.

"I am." Ami had placed both her hands on the girl's shoulders, and was forcing her to lean back so that she could see the extent of the damage. "Her abdominal cavity has been punctured by the tree's roots, and when we removed it, it reopened the wound. If we don't close it her left lung will collapse from the lack of pressure and she'll asphyxiate. Quick, I need my bag."

Mamoru sprinted to the backpack, snatching it off the ground and running back. Ami rifled through the bag, procuring her instruments and beginning work on closing up the wound on the girl's chest while the girl wheezed and shuddered. "Keep her as steady as you can! This will have to hold until we can get back to camp where the rest of my medical supplies are!"

Ami began constructing a temporary block for the wound while Mamoru braced the girl by her shoulders. She began to thrash again as soon as she was held down, but he used his superior weight to keep her down. While Ami continued, he noticed her features for the first time.

She had skin so pale it was almost translucent, a small-heart shaped face and vacuous white eyes. They skittered to both sides as she tried to see what was going on, crying nonstop, and it dawned on him that she was blind. The brittle red hair they'd found on the forest floor was in fact silvery white at the top of her head, and longer than any hair he'd ever seen. It was easily three full meters in length. Her skin wasn't wrinkled, but Ami had been right in predicting she might be in her late teens, it wasn't impossible with her complexion. Her skin had deep indents and creases from the roots of the tree, some were leaking red misery.

Ami finished closing the breach in the airway and moved to bandage the girl's hand even as she started to make weak croaks and gasps. Mamoru helped her sit up and held her arm stationary while Ami wrapped the injured fingers in sterile bandages. The girl was speaking in a frenetic whisper, Mamoru was sure of it, but he only knew Japanese and English, and this was neither of the two. "We need that translator back here, right around now," he remarked, helping Ami finish up with the bleeding wounds on the girl's other arm. Repeatedly the girl attempted to hit or claw Mamoru and Ami away from herself, to which Mamoru responded by pinning the offending limb as delicately as he could without causing further injury so Ami could focus. The girl's movements were weak and uncontrolled, despite her obvious fear.

"Go get him," Ami said after a moment, taking the shirt off the girl's sleeve and tugging it over her head. As Mamoru watched, the girl began to struggle again, ripping a new hole in his shirt before Ami could help her find the sleeve gaps.

He stood and rushed down the trail of red flags on the trees to Rei's location. He found her and Alejandro sitting and enjoying the view of the jungle canopy from a high point on the mountain while they looked at some ancient jewelry pieces. "We need your help!" He said, panting as he bent forward to catch his breath.

Rei turned towards him with a scowl, "What no-Mamoru?" Noticing that he was shirtless, covered in dirt and winded, Rei got up to help brace Mamoru from falling over.

The native rose as well, "Wout es et?" he asked. His accent was thick enough that it made it difficult for Mamoru to communicate with him sometimes even when he spoke English.

"She's saying something, we need you to translate it. And we need to get her back to the camp site as soon as possible."

As they hurried back towards Ami, Mamoru gave them an abridged version of what they'd found. He left out the part about first assuming she was dead, and the fact they'd had to dig up half a tree just to get her out. He hoped Ami had at least partially covered up the damage they'd done before Rei the eco-nazi saw it.

When they pushed past the final layer of vines and greenery to the area they'd found her, he saw Ami sitting trying to placate the girl with soothing sounds as the strange girl continued to rasp out garbled whispers and spasm about.

"What does the gibberish mean?" He demanded.

Alejandro held up a hand to silence him, listening to the quiet words.

"Well?" Mamoru interrupted again after a few seconds.

"I duo nat knouw," the man said, warding Mamoru off with his hands.

"You're a translator! This is what we're paying you for!"

"No es Espanish. Es berry deefrent. " he said.

Mamoru turned a perplexed look to Rei, who rolled her eyes heavenward. "He said that she's not speaking Spanish, Portugese, or any other language he recognizes. This is something not resembling any of the endemic languages."

"Look at this!" Ami held was still bent near the woman, and in her hands she had several more shards of ceramic, each with pieces of unfamiliar letters on them. From a few feet away, Mamoru could see hundreds more artifacts scattered amongst the roots, all around the body of the mysterious blind girl.

AN: I'm trying nano in a month not november for once. I started late, and I don't know how motivated I will be to finish, but its worth a try. Shorter chapters, a longer plot, we'll see how it goes. This is my first AU/AR, and the characters are going to be anywhere from slightly OOC to very OOC since this was planned as a original piece of fiction and altered for the SM universe since I don't know how far I'll get with it. Anyways, hope you enjoyed chapter 1. :)


	2. Chapter 2

"I still can't BELIEVE what you two did to that tree!" Rei complained. "It'll be lucky if it can survive the damage!"

Between the residual heat, Rei's bitching, and his initial reaction to the discovery of the potential zombie inside the tree, Mamoru had very little adrenaline, and even less patience, left for the journey back to the camp. Nonetheless, he and Alejandro were the only two men on the crew, so the duty of hauling the half-dead body back was defaulted onto them. The option of leaving her at the tree to fend for herself had earned him some hateful glares from the rest of the gang.

There was too much hair for them to carry back with the girl, so being the only one present with long hair, Rei had taken the liberty of chopping it off so it now fell around the girl's ankles. They'd wrapped it around itself into a kind of knot and piled it onto her lap so it wouldn't drag while they carried her. In order to keep the mysterious handicapped girl from unintentionally injuring herself while they walked back to the camp site, Mamoru and Alejandro were forced to carry one half of her body each. However, as Mamoru took another hit to the stomach from her violently writhing leg, he knew he'd chosen to carry the wrong half.

Meanwhile the girl continued to speak nonstop with growing intensity and volume. Ami was making a point to try and write down a version of everything she was saying so that when a translator for the right language was found, they'd be able to decipher what exactly she was so adamant about saying. The temporary block Ami had made on her worst injury had come loose twice from the girl's pinwheeling, and left them scrambling to secure it back in place.

As he took another hit to the gut, Mamoru let out a grunt of pain. He knew it was from the repeated abuse, but her kicks felt stronger each time they landed a blow, and if her intermittent outbursts were any indicator, she was far less dead than he had initially assumed. "Can't we tie her up, or at least gag her?"

"God you are SUCH a baby," Rei said as she shifted the burden of the extra backpack she was carrying. With Mamoru and Alejandro carrying the stranger, she and Ami were each given an extra bag to lug around. And since Ami was busy scribbling down every bit of nonsense the girl said and fixing her bandages every time she loosened them, Rei was left to take point on their journey back through the jungle, and she was less than pleased with the position. She saw another red tag up ahead, as she stepped over a rotting log. "She weighs what, half your weight?"

"I was talking about you," he ribbed.

"She's clearly blind, Mamoru, and possibly deaf as well. We may have saved her life, but to her, we are complete strangers. How would you feel if someone carried you off and then decided to tie you down and gag you as well?" Ami tapped her pen on the pad she'd already filled halfway.

"I'd feel lucky to be alive. I wouldn't feel like attacking the people who dug my sorry ass out of a tree! How did she even get in there anyways?"

"A better question would be how did she survive in there long enough for the tree to take root in her," Ami corrected.

"Who cares!" Rei threw her hands toward the darkening canopy overhead. It was approaching nightfall, and the nocturnal life was beginning to swell while the birds' cries faded. "We still have at least another mile to go before we get to the camp and we're losing light fast, so could we all just shut up about her and walk?"

"Man, I know you're an ecologist Rei, but don't you have some appreciation for human life?" Mamoru tightened his grip on the girl's leg as she tried to take a swing at his face.

"Of course I do. But I'm not going to get lost and die out here because I'm curious about who she is. Talking about it isn't going to get us any answers, or any closer to the camp site."

They continued the rest of the walk without speaking, listening to the mantra of the girl's words and the cacophony of life around them.

As Rei pushed aside a Reinhardtia frond, the clearing where their camp was set up came into view. "Finally," she breathed, tossing the backpacks into one of the tents.

She made a beeline for food. "I'd kill for a sirloin," Rei groused, prying the lid off of a can of tuna. Reaching into the battery-powered cooler, she pulled out a loaf of bread.

"I'm going to re-examine her," Ami ducked under the flap as Mamoru and Alejandro put down the girl near the edge of Ami's tent. She came out with a bigger bag of medical supplies. She tried to soothe the girl as she worked by explaining what she was about to do, but it didn't seem to help much. Ami shooed Mamoru away as she lifted the oversized and ruined shirt up off the girl to check the major wounds.

Mamoru helped himself to a bottled water, pulling out the jar of peanut butter from the cooler to make his own sandwich. "I'm going to be so sore tomorrow "

Rei watched Ami work, going closer and squatting down beside them. "She doesn't seem to be very comfortable around us," Rei noted.

"She's not. And I'm not sure how to calm her down enough to replace the temporary block I made for her puncture wound."

"Hmm " Rei took one of the girl's battered hands in her own, humming softly to her. The girl turned toward the sound, stilling her tongue for the first time since they'd found her.

"Keep humming Rei, she's starting to relax." Ami took off the gauze atop the worst wound to inspect the injury. Reaching into her medical kit she pulled out the necessary tools to put an airtight seal over the opening. "We'll need to get her to some kind of hospital as soon as we can," Ami said. "She won't be able to survive for more than a week in this condition." Rei nodded agreement, before returning to a random melody.

"How are we going to keep her from running off overnight?" Mamoru asked with a knowing look as he came over to inspect. Ami pulled the shirt back down over the girl to protect her privates.

"We'll probably have to restrain her someh-Oh I see what you are doing." Ami frowned at him. "Well, I doubt she has enough energy to get very far on her own, she's been flailing and struggling nonstop since we found her. First we need to get her cleaned up as best we can so these wounds don't get infected and then we should put her in a tent."

Reaching into the cooler, Ami pulled out a jar of honey. As she dabbed it onto the wounds, Mamoru grabbed another water bottle and a spare shirt before tipping the water onto the cloth. He handed it to Ami and she began wiping off layers of filth embedded into the foreign girl's skin. The dark impressions from where the roots had been were starting to heal, but the deeper perforations from where the tree had grown into her were still ugly and raw.

"Those will make some gnarly scars," Mamoru commented, and Ami nodded. "Shame, she'd have an alright face if it weren't covered in damage. Who do you think did this to her?"

"We won't know anything until we can figure out what language she speaks. Then we'll get a better idea for where she's from, and we might be able to find her family and return her to them without even involving local authorities." Rei snorted her skepticism in the middle of her song, but continued to hum a lullaby Mamoru vaguely recognized while Ami spoke. The memory of the name of the song was just out of grasp, a phantom in the fog of his mind.

"She isn't dark enough to be from one of the indigenous tribes," he noted. "Maybe she's from a different continent like us?"

"She must be if Alejandro didn't know her language. He speaks twelve different dialects from this country alone." Ami poured more water onto the cloth, pressing it onto the girl's face. The girl squirmed away from the wetness on her face. She seemed to be somewhere between adolescence and womanhood, too young to be an adult, but too old to be a child.

Rei noticed the direction of Mamoru's gaze and paused her singing long enough to mutter darkly "Men." Ami held in her laughter as she kept working.

Mamoru left before they could begin a tirade about the problems with his gender. Sitting down next to Alejandro, he offered the translator a fresh water bottle. "Like women are any better," he mumbled.

Alejandro gave him an uncomprehending look but took the water bottle from his hands. "She es alright?" Mamoru nodded. "Goud."

"Ami says we need to get her to a hospital though, so I guess this survey is over. And we were only two days in We'll just have to head back to civilization, and hope we have enough artifacts to get us funding for an excavation. With that find at the base of the tree though, we shouldn't have any trouble getting funding, we might even get sponsored." Alejandro nodded.

"There ees a estorry en my cultures, of la perrdita frrom tree." Mamoru had never been interested in superstition, but with recent events he was ready to put disbelief aside. "Eshe es of wood, borrn en a eseedling and grrown to be trree herself. Therre es only fibe like trrees en wourld."

Mamoru considered the words, only catching half of them, before brushing himself off as he stood up, "Its been a long day, and I'm going to sleep."

He picked up Ami's notepad as he headed towards his tent, skimming the words she'd written down phonetically in hopes he might recognize one. "Guess not," he said as he dropped the book down on the ground.

Ami finished wiping most of the sediment from the girl's skin. "I think I can handle it from here Rei, why don't you get some sleep."

Rei shook her head, "I'll stay 'til you're finished. I don't mind, I hate talking anyways." Ami hid her smile at the irony in Rei's statement. The foreign girl began fidgeting as soon as Rei stopped humming, but she was in a much more peaceful state than she had been earlier.

"We should lock her into a tent so she doesn't wander off in the night," Ami suggested. "I wouldn't mind sharing my tent with her so I can make sure she doesn't hurt herself at night," Ami added.

"Only problem is, we didn't bring any locks." Rei pointed out.

"Yes we did, there is one on the cooler. Put the cooler inside your tent so the animals can't get into our food supplies, and I'll use the lock to keep her in my tent." Ami helped the girl into a standing position as she guided her into the tent.

"Where do you think she's from?" Rei asked as she followed them.

Ami shrugged. "I haven't recognized a word she's said and she's been rambling since we found her. Alejandro didn't recognize anything she said either, which means it isn't Spanish, Portuguese, or any of the local dialects. It doesn't sound like any language I've ever studied either, its not oriental at all, and its definitely not a romance language. It could be an African vernacular."

"What if she's an alien?" Rei gave Ami a cheshire smile, knowing Ami wouldn't hear her sarcasm.

"The probability of her being an alien is slim to none. She has entirely human features, and is-" noticing Rei smiling, Ami glowered at her. "You and Mamoru have the same rotten sense of humor."

"Oh don't be be sore like that." Rei helped Ami lower the girl onto Ami's sleeping bag. "Where will you sleep?"

"I'm going to catalogue the artifacts we found today, start writing up a record for all the different symbols we found and see if I can match any of them." Ami pulled out a book from her backpack. Rei noticed their guest was starting to thrash again as she zipped up the sleeping bag. Taking her hand in her own, she started humming again. Ami clipped a book light to her notepad as she started to work.

"You're very good with her," Ami complimented, cracking open the textbook on ancient linguistics and carefully unwrapping the first ceramic Mamoru found.

"She's easy to get along with," Rei explained. "Its egotistical loudmouths like Mamoru I have trouble dealing with."

"You two get along well enough," Ami began replicating the symbol painted on the clay into her notebook. Rei's soft humming filled the cramped tent with an atmosphere of safety while Ami worked. "She should drift off soon, if she doesn't I can give her a sleeping aid."

"You brought sleeping pills on this trip?" Rei goggled. "You really are overly-prepared everywhere you go." The platinum-haired girl was already beginning to snore, despite Ami and Rei's quiet conversation.

"I have trouble sleeping sometimes," she admitted. "Besides, its better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it." Ami quoted as she pulled out another shard of pottery.

Rei felt a shiver creep down her spine at the words. She would later come recognize this as a premonition of things to come.


	3. Chapter 3

As the sun's first rays spattered the fecund soil of the jungle with light, chaos was ensuing below.

"We have to get them out of there!" Mamoru shouted, watching Ami's tent roll end over end as the screaming blind girl tried to claw her way out of a closed and locked tent. "All of our artifacts are in Ami's backpack! If any of them are damaged-!"

"Ami is the only one with the key and she's in there with her!" Rei was on one side of the tent trying to keep it from tipping sideways again with Mamoru on the other doing the same despite the violent rocking motions from within. "Ami are you okay in there?"

Alejandro poked his head out of his tent at the commotion, heavy eyelids betraying his unpleasant awakening.

"I'm fine! Rei you need to hum for her again, try to calm her down, she's panicking again and I can't hold her down by myself!"

Rei immediately began humming, although it was a bit strained as she grunted every few seconds when the force of the momentum from inside the tent.

"Oh screw this!" Mamoru said after a few seconds of ineffective crooning from Rei. He waited for another limb to push out of the tent before making a grab for it. Clinging to the arm through the rainproof tarp of the tent, he wrestled with the girl a minute. The girl shrieked and swore in her native tongue, but eventually lessened her efforts. "Finally. Ami got your key?"

"Got it! Unzipping now!" For a few moments nothing happened, but then the flap folded down to reveal Ami, the other girl, and the disaster that was once her sleeping space.

"Were any of the artifacts ruined?" Mamoru tried to peer around Ami to see whether or not he could determine the extent of the loss without releasing his hold on rebellious limb and even more rebellious guest.

"I don't think so, they're all wrapped and stored in the bag. Let me go through it." As Ami exited the tent with her backpack, Rei came around to help the blind girl out of the tent. As soon as she was outside, the girl squatted down in a very familiar position.

"Oh, that is rich. Is she really taking a piss right in the middle of-woah, okay." Mamoru turned away, but not before rolling Ami's tent back in the other direction. Rei took a few steps away from the girl when she saw the reason for all the fuss. When she finished, Rei gave her a wet cloth for her hands, helping her stand up and move away from the small puddle.

"Small miracle she hasn't killed herself yet through sheer stupidity," Mamoru raked a hand through his hair as he watched the blind woman stumble over her own hair.

"I'll need to check her over again to make sure she didn't undo any of the bandages during this," Ami unrolled the first artifact, sighing in visible relief when it was unharmed. "Mamoru, why don't you look through the rest of these to make sure they're intact while I go check on the girl?"

While Ami went to evaluate the girl, Mamoru took over the task. Ami found the girl sitting with Rei and Alejandro, Rei was holding the girl's hand and trying to get her to eat some bread.

"That's wonderful," she said, after a moment watching them, "She's really warming up to you. If this keeps up we might not have to restrain her tonight." Ami picked up the girl's free hand, rechecking the injuries. "She's making a great recovery too. I think once we get that larger wound in her abdomen closed off by a surgeon, she'll make a full mend." She grabbed a piece of bread for herself from the cooler, and some prepackaged diced mangos.

"Do you think someone did this to her- her eyes I mean?" Rei was trying to tip water into the girl's mouth but the girl kept shifting and it wound up spilling down her front.

"I don't know. It was too late when we returned last night to give her a visual exam, but I suppose now is as good a time as any." Shifting to sit in front of the girl, Ami reached up to hold her face steady while she searched for signs of trauma. She gasped in surprise.

"What, what es et?"

"I-" Ami cut herself off, holding up her finger in front of the girl's eyes. Slowly, she moved her finger from one side to the other, watching as the girl's pupils jerked from one side to the other. "She's not entirely blind! She's only motion blind."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Rei set down her water bottle, having finished her breakfast.

"It means she can see objects, but not movement. She can't see things like my hand moving in front of her, but she can see the rest of me since its stationary."

"Could someone have done that to her?" asked Rei.

"No. But yesterday I could have sworn... I guess I wasn't paying enough attention, since I was more focused on equalizing the pressure in her torso cavity." Ami lowered her head, feeling guilty for not having immediately performed a visual exam.

Ami took a bite of her fruit, washing it down with water as Mamoru wandered over. "Everything is fine, your bubblewrap may have saved us, Ami." Ami gave him a small smile.

The blind girl reached up to take the bottle from Rei, tipping it into her own mouth. She ran her hands up and down along the sides, and dropped the bottle in fright when the plastic bent under the pressure. Rei picked it up off the ground and handed it to her again. This time she held it upside down, mouth open expectantly, flinching away as the bottle crinkled again.

"We still have another two day's walk at least, if we head out now, before we make it back to the city." Rei stood up, stretching out. Instinctively the girl turned towards where Rei had been, rattling off a string of words. "Did you get a chance to look over the things she was saying yesterday, Ami?"

"I did, but I won't be able to translate them without some sort of key to work from. I don't have an alphabet or even a single word from this language to use as a starting point."

"I'm not carrying her again," Mamoru announced, crossing his arms over his chest. "She gave me enough abuse yesterday to last me through the rest of the week, thank you very much."

"You won't have to carry her, now that she has a more secure solution to the injury in her abdomen, she should be able to walk on her own, although she'll need someone to lean on and guide her. If we can keep her sedated-and I think Rei is the one she trusts the most-then we should be able to lead her with us as we walk."

"I'll find her a walking stick," Mamoru turned to scavenge the forest floor, breaking a branch in half and skinning its leaves off. He leaned on it, satisfied when it didn't break. "This should do."

"We can alternate being her guide today," Ami decided. "We'll start with Rei leading her, and switch off with who clears the path and who helps to lead her." Rei huffed but didn't say anything to the contrary.

"Lets get going then, it'll be a long day."

Alejandro and Mamoru packed up the tents while Ami and Rei practiced letting go of, and then picking up the girl's free hand to lead her about the camp area. After Ami was satisfied that she understood she was being guided, they gave her the walking stick and began their trek.

It wasn't five minutes into the journey before the blind girl decided that using the stick as a weapon was far more entertaining than using it as a crutch.

"Ouch!" Mamoru swore under his breath as she hit him in the side for the third time with the stick. The girl let out tiny pants of laughter, babbling a few words at him before whacking him again in the leg. Moving further ahead of her, he glanced over his shoulder to see her swinging the stick wildly in front of her, searching for something to hit. "Rei can you do something about her and that damn stick?"

Reaching out, Rei brought the girl's other hand back down to the ground, and tried to move the girl's shoulders so that the weight of her upper body was resting on the stick. Unfortunately, the girl didn't seem to understand that Rei wished her to lean on the stick, and instead fell forward onto her face.

"This is ridiculous," Rei said, helping the silver-haired girl up. "How are we suppose to guide a blind person through the middle of the jungle? She doesn't even know how to use a walking stick!"

Alejandro was currently at the head of the group, but he slowed down when he heard the conversation between them. Ami had her notepad clipped to her belt in case the girl said any new words, and she seemed overly fascinated by the behavior of the stranger. At least, Mamoru thought she was.

"At least she isn't fighting against us anymore," Ami said.

"Oh I beg to differ," Mamoru rubbed his sore thigh, where he could feel that the stick had left a mark.

"Should we take her walking stick away? She doesn't seem to be using it," Ami suggested.

"Yes, PLEASE," Mamoru snatched the stick, throwing it a few yards away. When he turned back, he could see tears welling up in the periwinkle blue eyes. As she began to cry, Mamoru's brows drew together in confusion. "Weren't her eyes colorless, Ami? When we first found her?"

"I didn't notice," she admitted. "I was preoccupied with the external injuries."

"They were white," Mamoru said, leaning in closer to get a better look, his jaw set. "I'm sure of it."

"Well who cares what color her eyes are if she can't see out of them," Rei said, hands akimbo.

"Like I said earlier, she is only partially blind. She can see shapes, just not movement. So technically she could navigate this place without aid, but she'd be unable to discern whether something was an animal or a tree if she encountered it alone," Ami explained.

"Her eyes were white," Mamoru repeated, only then remembering that she was still crying. Reaching down he grabbed a twig off the dirt, handing it to her. She hiccuped, but seemed to accept the replacement, giving him an experimental smack to the face with it.

"NOT THE FACE!" He cried, quickly backpedaling and reaching a hand up to check for damage. He gave an audible sigh when he found none.

"Such a baby," Rei shook her head, guiding the girl past him.

As they continued walking, Ami took it upon herself to begin attempting to educate the strange girl. She would point to a stationary object like a tree and repeat the word three times, before moving on to a different object. Every now and then, she would point to something and wait for the girl to speak. Much to everyone's surprise, sometimes she said the right word. Other times, she'd say a word nobody recognized, which Ami would immediately jot down.

"Es time to eswitsche," Alejandro said, moving to take the girl's hand. Rei gave a dramatic sigh, but stepped up to take point again.

As they continued onward, Mamoru and Rei joined in on the game of teaching the girl words, showing her flowers and leaves and applauding her when she'd guess the right name. While they continued this, Ami delved deeper into her notebook, attempting to decode the language based on the few words she'd gathered as keys.

"We should stop soon, to eat and rest," Ami put down her notepad, now almost full with words and symbols.

"I could use a break," Rei leaned backwards against a tree, sliding down it till she was sitting in the leaves of a plant.

"I'm famished," Mamoru picked up a piece of fruit of the ground. "This poisonous?"

"No," Rei said as she took the cooler out of her pack.

"The artifacts we found," Ami mentioned, as though it were an afterthought. "They didn't match any of the logosyllabic symbols from the Mayan antiquities in my pre-Colombian linguistics book."

"Then there is a good chance we've found something undiscovered," said Rei, swallowing a bite of another tuna sandwich.

"Lets not draw any conclusions yet. It could be from a local tribe, especially considering our friend here," Ami gave a pointed look to the strange girl, who was currently announcing the names of trees and plants, much to Alejandro's amusement. "I should redress her bandages."

"Why, didn't you do that this morning?"

"We had other things to worry about, like teaching her how to follow one of us. I haven't changed anything from yesterday and with the humidity out here and the fact none of us will have access to a shower until we reach the city, she'll need to have them redressed at least once a day."

"We should teach her how to cuss," Mamoru suggested. When Rei gave him a dirty look he rushed to defend himself, "What! It helps people cope with pain, its scientifically proven!"

"I wonder what her name is," Ami pondered, tapping her chin. "I'll see if I can figure it out while I'm cleaning her up again." Finishing up her own meal, Ami went over towards Alejandro and the girl, taking off her backpack as she did in preparation to find her medical kit.

"Leaf!" the girl exclaimed, pointing to a leaf on the ground.

"Very good," Ami praised with a smile, sitting down beside them. "I know you don't understand all this yet, but I'm going to look at your wounds again." Reaching out she took the girl's hand, holding it steady while she re-examined the wrappings on the girl's arm.

She felt her breath catch as she pulled off the first bandage from the girl's index finger. "What...?"

Beneath the dirty and bloodied bandage, there was only smooth flesh below, where yesterday her fingers had been so badly damaged by the roots of the tree that the muscle was exposed.

"Wout es et?" Alejandro asked, leaning in closer.

"Her hands " Ami caught herself, before she said anything else. The ramifications of what she'd just discovered could be devastating if they were true. "Oh I just, wasn't expecting her to heal so quickly," she bluffed, keeping the bandage close to the girl's had as she reached for sterile gauze.

She continued this tactic until she'd covered all of the superficial wounds from yesterday with clean gauze, even though only a few of the wounds still even existed. This girl's body was healing at at least ten times the normal rate, and Ami was beginning to question just how possible the impossible odds of this were. There was a chance that the location, in the middle of a mostly unexplored jungle, had helped give this girl's immune system an added boost that normal humans didn't have. But even with diet and good health, it still wouldn't allow a human to recover so quickly. This girl either had a genetic factor, or was-no, Ami shook the thought away. There was no way they'd come across an alien. It was absurd, and her logic-oriented mind dismissed the improbability. But was it any more likely than the reality she was facing?

She paused before moving to fix the final airtight bandage.

She hoped Alejandro wouldn't be paying enough attention while she put fresh bandages onto the wound to notice that the girl was no longer gasping for breath when she opened the sealing bandage.

Thinking better of it, Ami pulled back, as though she'd only been leaning in to inspect the hygiene. "That's it, she's all set." She announced, rolling up the used gauze and sealing it in a plastic bag. Alejandro gave her curious look, but didn't say anything.

This was a bigger finding than the pottery with its mysterious symbols. Everything was beginning to click into place, but Ami still felt like she was missing several pieces of the puzzle. Her mind raced with questions, but as she looked back at the blind girl, she realized she wouldn't be getting any answers anytime soon. At least, not until the language barrier was crossed.

Her mind set, Ami pulled her notebook free from its binding. She would finish unraveling the secrets of the language while they walked, using the game from earlier to try and glean words from the girl.

In her haste, she forgot to attempt to learn the girl's name.

AN: Chapter 4 and 5 will be up soon. Thanks for all the reviews, I've had a truly terrible day, and they made it a little bit better. Thank you to Mgray for beta-reading as well.


	4. Chapter 4

As they continued, Ami focused entirely on unlocking the key to the language while Rei and Mamoru helped guide the girl. It was agreed that Alejandro would lead their way out since he had the most knowledge of the jungle, and didn't know English well enough to help teach the strange girl.

Ami was having difficulty focusing on the task at hand though. She had so many questions about the girl, and even a twinge of morbid curiosity about the extent of her healing capabilities. The magnitude of her knowledge made her especially wary of Mamoru and the others, lest they realize the same thing she had.

And considering that the girl's energy seemed to be increasing by the hour, instead of decreasing like anyone else with the kind of injuries she'd endured, it would only be a matter of time before someone noticed the abnormality.

"DON'T MOVE!" Rei yelled, out of nowhere. Everyone froze except the girl, who took a fumbling step forward and then fell back again when Mamoru's hand pulled her backwards.

Pulled out of her thoughts, Ami looked up from the text. "What is it?"

"Alejandro, step back," Rei ordered, eyes fixed on the ground.

"Wout?"

"You're about to step on a nest of Bullet Ants!" She explained, pointing to the small hill in the dirt, obscured by fallen leaves and grasses.

"Ah, es el diablo!" He mocked. Scooping up a handful of the ants, he winced as they stung his hand. "Es only bug. Es nout bad."

The girl moved forward, bending over to pick up an ant herself. Ami held her breath, praying the other's wouldn't pay it any undue attention.

Curious, Mamoru stepped forward to examine the arthropods. "He's right, they're just bu-HOLY MOTHER OF JESUS!" Smashing the ant into oblivion, he threw it onto the ground, digging his heel into it.

"Mamoru!" Ami said, aghast at the behavior.

"Son of a bitch those things burn!" He looked over to Alejandro, who was gently letting down each ant that he'd cupped in his hand. "How are you doing that?"

"Es ecustum tu wearr ant esleebes." He put the last ant back down, looking over the small bite marks rising on his palm.

The girl put her ant down too, turning around and holding a hand out expectantly.

"Jeesh, she's like a little kid," Mamoru complained, giving her the hand that wasn't going partially numb from the ant's toxin.

Rei heaved an exasperated sigh. "You two are the kids. Sticking your hands into the hornet's nest," she tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Let's just keep going already. We need to find a place to set up camp soon before we lose the daylight."

"I've translated a few of the words she was saying earlier," Ami said, looking over her many notes and scribbles. "Luckily whatever language she speaks is syllabic, like Japanese, so once I figure out all of the basic syllables then I just have to figure out what the combinations of them mean."

"We should set up camp over there," Mamoru suggested, pointing to a cluster of fern-like plants. "Its far enough away from the ants that our food stores should be safe, but its got plenty of tree cover from scavengers too."

"It'll do." Rei let her bag fall to the ground unceremoniously while she undid the straps. Pulling out the tent tarp she set up the poles on either side of it, drawing the tarp across them. The silver haired girl seemed oddly fascinated by the procedure, watching with rapt focus while Rei finished securing the supports on either side of her tent.

The others set up their tents as well, Ami unfolding her tent from its compressed form, while Mamoru and Alejandro pinned more tarp across wooden poles they bore into the ground.

"Let me guess, your dinner will be tuna?" Mamoru teased while he rolled out his sleeping bag next to Rei.

"No." Rei folded her arms in front of herself. "Tonight I'm not hungry."

"Is that so Well then you won't mind if I help myself to the last can of tuna..." Mamoru pulled out the can, popping open the lid before she could object.

"HEY!" She loomed over him, grabbing the can from his fingers. "You have no manners do you? Eating someone else's food is rude!"

"But you just said-"

"I said I wasn't hungry right now. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't have eaten it later..." Rei looked down at the meat. "I wouldn't want it to go to waste though..."

"Do what you want," Mamoru turned his back to her, throwing his sleeping bag into the freshly made tent.

"I will," She huffed, pulling out two pieces of bread from the cooler.

A few feet away, Ami was sitting with the strange girl, showing her various objects and telling her the words for them. Rei wandered over, curious how the translation was coming along.

"-Food," Ami said, holding out a piece of bread for the girl to see. "Food," she repeated as she lifted the bread up to the girl's mouth to eat. "Water," she held out a bottle of water for her to see, holding the girl's hand out to feel the liquid as she poured a bit of it sideways. "Bottle," she wrapped the girl's fingers around the plastic.

"Don't push her too hard," Rei sat down by them, assembling her sandwich. "She can't retain the whole language in a day."

"Kanasi," the girl said, tipping the water into Ami's hand. Ami smiled, writing the word down on her notepad. "Wa-ter."

"Prove me wrong why don't you," Rei complained, taking a hearty bite out of her dinner.

"She's learning English very well, I'm impressed with her progress. I think when we find her family we should suggest they give her English lessons. She's an adept."

"Great plan," Rei said with heavy sarcasm. "Except, we're not going to be the ones finding her family. We're going to be the ones handing her over to the police so they can deal with her. She isn't our responsibility Ami, and she's been nothing but a problem since we first found her."

Ami frowned. Rei had always been small on her love for humans, but the idea of handing over a blind, unidentified, and possibly underage stranger to a police from a foreign government should have curbed even her misanthropic tendencies. "I think maybe we should wait on that."

"For how long," Rei asked, giving Ami a dubious look.

"Just until we're sure she has recovered enough to take care of herself. We don't have a flight scheduled back to Japan for another week anyways, we could always use the time to try and find her relatives since we've already gathered enough artifacts from the survey." When she saw the cynical expression on Rei's face she hurried to continue. "We don't have to decide now though, let's wait until we're at least out of the jungle. I'll have the language translated a bit more by then, hopefully enough for us to be able to understand what she was trying to tell us when we first found her."

Rei gave another laborious sigh, "If you weren't my best friend " she teased.

"You'd live a cold, empty life searching for someone else who has the patience to deal with your foul temper," Mamoru finished for her as he came up beside the others.

"Oh shut up, Mamoru. Like you're any better." Rei stood, moving towards her own tent. The dark-haired man sat down where she'd been resting, stretching out his arms above his head.

"What a day. How is she?" He tipped his chin to the silver-haired girl.

"She's doing great, I was just telling Rei how impressed I am with her ability to pick up English, and none of her wounds are infected so far," Ami supplied. She bit her tongue before she could let anything else about the mysterious vanishing puncture wounds slip.

"I know we got off to a bad start," Mamoru said, leaning forward towards the girl. "But I'm Mamoru." He raised a hand to point at his face, keeping it there a few extra seconds in case she couldn't see. Before the conversation could get any further, he shot up out of his position. "Ami!"

"What is it?" Ami felt trepidation crawling up the hairs on her arms. Could he have seen beneath a bandage to the uninjured skin?

"Her eyes," He said, incredulous. "They're blue."

"Really?" Ami leaned in to see the girl's eyes for herself. Tilting the girl's face towards herself, Ami confirmed that they were in fact now a cornflower blue, at least two shades darker than they had been that morning. Putting her finger up in front of the girl's face, she shifted it from left to right, astounded when the pupils smoothly followed the movements.

"Mamoru, I think you should sit down," Ami tried to keep her tone neutral.

"Why? What kind of person has eyes that change colors?"

Ami weighed her options, resigning herself to the fact that she couldn't keep this one a secret. "The kind of person who is no longer blind."

"What?" Mamoru stood dumbfounded for several seconds before the words registered. "She's not blind?" Ami shook her head. "How is that even possible, she was DEFINITELY blind when we found her."

"Keep your voice down," Ami advised, looking sideways to where Rei and Alejandro were chatting a few yards away. "I don't know how it's possible, but she was blind, and she isn't anymore."

"Just what exactly do we know about this girl?" Mamoru asked, giving the girl a suspicious once over. She looked back at him oblivious, mirroring the appraisal. He took his seat again, turning to Ami for answers.

"I haven't been able to translate much of anything she said during the first day," the petite girl confessed. "I did manage to translate the first thing she said to us, though, when we initially dug her out, while she could barely speak."

"What was she saying?" Mamoru didn't know if he actually wanted to know or not, but curiosity won out.

"'Please, stop.' Or maybe closer to 'leave me be' or 'don't come near.'" Ami licked her lips, wringing her hands. "Whatever the exact phrasing translated to though, the general gist was the same." She looked Mamoru dead in the eyes.

"I don't think she wanted to be found."

AN: sailormama, inspiration comes at predawn hours for me. So, 4 am, and suddenly I get a worthy thought for a story(its 5:43 a.m. as I write this now). markus, her name will get revealed within the next 3 chapters. What she is, that will take a few more chapters. :3 Thank you everyone else who has reviewed, I really do appreciate it. Another big thank you to MGray for beta-reading this chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

"So, what's the plan?" Mamoru tentatively asked. "Should we leave her in the jungle?"

"What! No! Of course not." Ami blew out a tense breath. "She may not have wanted to be rescued, but now that she has been, I don't think she'd want to go back there. Just look at her."

Mamoru glanced at the girl, who was experimenting with the many different ways to hold and eat bread. "She looks like she'd be right at home on the special bus," he quipped.

"We're at least getting her out of the wilderness," her expression brooked no argument.

Mamoru pulled a hand through his hair, remembering the burden of this girl's secret. "Shouldn't we tell Rei and Alejandro?"

"If we can help it, no." Ami chewed her lip. "If we can't, then we play down the impossibility of it. Act like we know why she got her sight back."

Mamoru turned a shrewd eye onto Ami. "What else are you keeping from us?" Ami felt a sudden need to squirm under his scrutiny. She pursed her lips, straightening her spine with her resolve. "Nothing you need to know. Yet. We'll deal with everything after we get her safely out of the jungle."

Noticing the girl was attempting to shove an entire loaf into her mouth at once, Mamoru took the bread from the girl, breaking it into pieces and holding out one chunk at a time to her.

"I think I've had enough surprises for one night. Goodnight, Ami." Turning, he left to go to his own tent. The silver-haired girl turned to watch him go, standing up as if she were about to follow.

Ami grabbed her hand before she could, shaking her head no when the girl gave her a questioning look. Tugging gently, Ami lead her back to her own tent, showing her the interior of the sleeping bag and demonstrating how to secure herself into it. A light of recognition dawned and the girl began rattling off more words in her language, pleased to have figured out that this was the strange cocoon she'd been wrapped in the night before. Ami picked out two words from the barrage that she'd already successfully translated, "night" and "tight."

Ami gave her a tired smile, motioning her to lay down before zipping up the sleeping bag. As Ami stood to go make herself comfortable on the other side of the tent, the girl caught her hand. Ami turned back to her, confused. The girl tugged on Ami's hand, much as Ami had earlier, and curious, Ami acquiesced to laying down beside the girl.

As the girl cuddled Ami from behind, Ami tried not to blush at the intimacy of their position. The girl was few years younger than herself, but clearly whatever culture she came from was a very physically close one. It explained why she'd been pacified after they began holding her hand. While Ami continued to run through the events of the previous two days in her mind, trying in vain to find a feasible interpretation for everything, the girl began snoring softly.

When she woke up the next day, Ami noticed that the girl was no longer in the sleeping bag. Looking around the tent, she saw that a few of her possessions had been shifted around while she was asleep, but everything was still unscathed.

Poking her head out of her tent flap, Ami saw Rei and Alejandro making themselves breakfast. Approaching, she ventured, "Do either of you know where the girl is?"

"I thought she was staying in your tent?" Rei asked.

Ami felt a lump settle in the pit of her stomach. "Wake up Mamoru, we need to find her."

Rei went to Mamoru's tent while Alejandro and Ami put away the food and locked up the cooler again.

After some misanthropic grumblings about the reasons for why they had to find the girl, Mamoru agreed to the idea of a short search.

"We'll split up, cover more ground, and meet back here in an hour," Mamoru said, pointing north. "Ami, you head that way, Rei, you go south, Alejandro, West and I'll take east. If anyone finds her, try not to make her panic, and don't come search for the rest of us. Just bring her back here at the one hour mark."

Everyone set off in various directions, pushing aside the dense blanket of green life as they went.

"HEY! GIRL!" Mamoru called for what felt like the hundredth time, hands cupped to his face. The wind in the trees was his only answer.

"IF YOU CAN HEAR ME, PLEASE ANSWER!" Ami pleaded, searching through the thicket for some sign of human travel. A footprint, a snapped branch, anything to signal that someone had been there recently. When she saw nothing, she stepped a few feet forward, repeating the call at another angle.

"HEEELLLLLOOOO!" Rei bellowed, already losing her patience for this wild hunt. She slapped a mosquito as it attempted to take a bite from her arm. "God, I hate this place." She stepped over some animal droppings, continuing onward.

"SENIORITA!" Alejandro stopped, seeing a rustle of movement up ahead. Approaching with caution, he found the hunched figure of the girl looking up at him with guilt. Behind her, he noticed another small damp patch of soil.

"Ah, ha estas perdido.(You are lost)" He surmised, helping the girl up. "Du nout worreh, I know the path." As he began to lead her back to the camp site, he noticed she wasn't stumbling half as much as she had the previous day. Giving her a backwards glance, he saw that her irises were no longer the same hue either, they were a bright sky blue. One of the bandages on her ankle had come loose as well, exposing nothing but clean flesh beneath. "Sabia que eres especial,(I knew you were special)" he smiled at the girl, a smile that widened as she smiled back and said something in her own language to him in return.

When they reached the camp site, only Rei had returned and she looked like she'd been given an impromptu mud bath. "Oh thank god someone found her," Rei said, sharp violet eyes immediately picking up the changes in the girl's appearance. If she had anything to say, she kept it to herself though. When Alejandro gave her an incredulous look, Rei's eyes darkened while she tried to scrape some of the sludge off her arm. "Don't ask."

"Si, si, eshe wos only off tou let naturre frree," he explained.

They turned towards Mamoru as he entered the camp site. "That's a relief," he admitted, seeing the girl was unharmed. Again, he noted that her eyes had darkened further. He wondered how dark they would be by the end of the journey.

"What's taking Ami?" Even before the sentence was finished, Ami returned, giving a sigh of relief at the sight of the girl.

"If we leave now, we could make it back to the city by nightfall," Rei said, trying in vain to get the mud out of her hair.

"Then what are we hanging around here for?" Mamoru asked, finishing packing up his tent. Mamoru sat down by the cooler with the silver-haired girl while Alejandro disassembled his tent and the others did the same.

"You sure are trouble," Mamoru said with a frown, eyeing the girl. Spotting the untied bandage on her ankle, Mamoru bent down to retie it, forcing himself to keep his eyes strictly downward. However, as he was retying it, he noticed the lack of blood on the cloth. "What are you?" he muttered.

Meanwhile, the girl was bent over searching the ground for something herself. Finding it, she leaned back up, holding the twig out to Mamoru. Taking it from her, he gave her a funny look before dropping it back to the ground. She gave him an angry pout, picking it back up and putting it in his hands. Now, for the first time, Mamoru noticed that she had very nice eyes beneath the filth and gauze covering her.

"What's this for?" He held the stick back out to her, but she pushed his hand closed around it. "Is this your way of apologizing for the other day?" He guessed. She licked her lips, unsure how to answer since she still didn't know the language. "Well, it's good enough, I guess," Mamoru drawled, extending his hand towards her in greeting. "I'm Mamoru," he said. While she searched his hand for some hidden treasure he was trying to give her, he laughed. Pointing at himself, he tried again, "Mamoru."

She seemed to understand the game, because she pointed at the water bottle and declared proudly, "Wa-ter."

"Yes," He said, smiling. He pointed to himself again. "Mamoru."

She looked at him, tasting the name for the first time "Ma-ma-roo."

"Mamoru," he corrected.

"Mamoru," she repeated.

"Very good," he said, enthused. "Now, what is your name?" He pointed a finger at her so she would understand that he was hoping for one of her words this time.

She pointed at herself questioningly, and Mamoru nodded in assurance. "Mamoru." She said.

He shook his head, pointing to the raven-haired ecologist as she struggled to roll her tent small enough to cram into her bag. "Rei."

"Rei," she said, if a bit over-enunciated.

"Ami," he pointed to the blue-haired girl as she finished zipping up her bag.

"Amni."

"No, Ami."

"Amni."

"Close enough "

"Ami," she tried again. He nodded his approval, a faint smile sneaking up on him as she clapped her hands.

"Aleja-well, his name might be a bit too much for you to try right now." Mamoru pulled a hand through his hair, pointing to himself again.

"Mamoru," she said with conviction.

"Good. Now what is your name?" He pointed to her.

She pointed to herself again, waiting for his nod of confirmation. "Serenity."

"No time for breakfast today," Ami announced as she approached them, fully packed. "If we want to reach the city by sundown, we'll need to make up for lost time." She glanced between the two of them. "Has she said any more words from her own language?"

"Her name is Serenity."

"NOW she tells us, AFTER we all go out screaming like idiots for a stranger whose name we don't even know," Rei grumbled as she came over. Her backpack looked even more haphazard than usual, with one of the metal rods of her tent sticking out from where it was crammed into the wrong segment of her bag.

"We should be going." Ami helped the girl up as though she were still injured, much to Rei and Mamoru's amusement, since they'd both already deduced that she was no longer handicapped in any way.

"Yeah." Mamoru waved Alejandro over, as Rei took the girl's hand to pretend guide her while they walked. Ami unclipped her notepad, flipping to a specific segment and beginning the task of decoding the language while they walked.

Mamoru stuck close to Rei and the girl, twisting the twig between his forefinger and thumb while he pondered what exactly Serenity might be. He'd already concluded that she wasn't normal, but to what degree he wasn't sure. He noticed that her hair, which Rei had cut on the first day to brush the tips of her ankles, was again dragging on the ground.

Thinking back to their exchange this morning, he quickly ruled out the possibility of some kind of perfect genius human, she was about as far from perfect as she could be. "What a weirdo," he muttered, twirling the twig between his fingers. But somehow, he couldn't bring himself to throw the twig back down onto the forest floor. AN: Writing Alejandro's lines is even more difficult than reading them, believe it or not. XD I hope everyone is liking the speed at which the mystery of the girl is unravelling, I'm trying very hard to keep it entertaining despite a repetitive day-by-day journey through the jungle. 


	6. Chapter 6

It was quickly becoming apparent that with restored sight, Serenity was absolutely fascinated with Ami's blue hair. And it was impossible to disguise her ability to see since she kept reaching out to pet Ami's head and tug on her hair. Ami weathered the playful and sometimes painful tugs with a docile smile.

As they walked, Ami and Serenity began to puzzle out basic communication. Ami would string words together in the foreign tongue, and then gauge and write down Serenity's reaction and amend her words. This went on for several hours before any signs of progress began to show through.

"What is 'routellek'" Ami asked as they walked around a pair of mating lizards.

Serenity made a happy noise when she recognized the word, pointing upward to the canopy.

"Treetops?" Ami pulled a nearby branch forward, pointing to the leaves at the top of the plant. Serenity shook her head, making a thoughtful expression. She pointed to her eyes, then back upward.

"Sky?" Ami scribbled something down, probably that she'd have to determine the exact word later. She looked at the next word on her lsit. "What is 'vuk'ta," Ami asked. Serenity stopped walking, looking suddenly fearful.

"Vuk'ta?" Ami repeated. Serenity turned sharply to her, making a slash with her arm in the air and said another few words in her own language. "You don't want me to say it," Ami made another note in her pad, moving on to the final word on the page.

"Bp'eyk," Ami tried. "No, maybe its Beyk…"

Serenity picked up a rock, plunging it towards her chest, stopping a few inches short.

"To die?" Ami frowned. Disturbed by the translation revealing itself, Ami closed her notebook and tucked it back onto her side. "Hungry?" She asked. Serenity nodded eagerly. "Yes," Ami said, nodding her head so Serenity would understand the correct word to match the gesture.

"About time, my feet are killing me," Rei was still partially-encrusted with dried mud despite her many attempts to scrape it off while they walked.

As everyone sat down to eat, Serenity took a handful of dirt, bringing it to her mouth and pressing it to her lips before releasing it.

"Uh…we have food," Mamoru said, eyebrows raised at her strange behavior.

"Its probably a custom," Ami supplied, making a mental note to write it down later as she chewed on her sandwich.

"How well can communicate with her, Ami?" He asked.

"I can ask her basic questions, but only questions where the answer is something easily defined like an object."

"Can you ask her where she's from, or if she has any family we should return her to?"

"I'll try." Ami turned to face Serenity. "Where is 'yumnast'(home)?" Ami asked.

Serenity shook her head, giving a sweeping gesture to the jungle around them.

"No," Ami shook her head to convey that that wasn't the answer she was looking for. "Yumnast," she tried again.

Serenity's brows drew together, but after a few moments she smiled. Reaching downward, she picked up a few twigs, sticking them into the soil and angling them together to form a sort of teepee structure. Breaking off a piece of a nearby stalk, she curled it into her hand, putting the hand down on the inside of the structure. "Home, Beyk," she said. Releasing the stalk, everyone watched in confusion as the stalk's leaves sprung back up and pushed apart the hut of twigs, leaving them scattered in the dirt.

"Your home is 'Beyk'?" Ami asked.

"Yesa," Serenity replied.

"Yes," Ami repeated for her. Serenity tried the word a few more times, smiling when she got it right.

"I don't think I have enough words from her language to ask about her family," Ami said, unable to draw her eyes away from the broken twigs.

"What did she say about her home? Beyick?" Rei took another bite of her sandwich and made a face of distaste.

"Should have brought more tuna," Mamoru teased.

"She said its dead," Ami recounted.

"Typical," Rei muttered. "Girl shows up somewhere impossible, without a past, and no communication skills. Its like every anime I've ever seen."

"She'll have a family," Mamoru said, trying to convince himself as much as the others. "There must be someone else who got out before her home got dead-ed."

"I hope so," Ami said, watching Serenity eat.

After packing up their cooler, the group set out again. The plants and animals began to thin as they approached the edge of the forest.

AN: This is not the end of the chapter, and this chapter has not been betaread so please excuse any mistakes. This is just where I finished writing up to, the end of the chapter is more than 1000 words a head of this *sigh*. I'm sorry but this story is going to be temporarily put on hiatus, I need to focus on some IRL issues right now that take priority over this nano attempt. I'll still finish it later on, but for now, please enjoy this and the other pieces of fanfiction I've put up, and I'm sorry for not being able to deliver the story up to the planned chapter 10-15. I'll finish writing it up to that point as soon as I get real life sorted back out.


	7. Chapter 7

"Serenity is a Latin name," Ami said, engrossed in her notes.

"Yes Sherlock, and Rei is a Japanese name," Maroru replied sarcastically. Rei was Serenity's current walking partner, with Alejandro still clearing a path up ahead. It was starting to get dark, but Alejandro had assured them only ten minutes ago that they were close to the end of the jungle. Considering the density and variety of vegetation was thinning, Mamoru believed it even though there was no end in sight. There were still birds cawing in the air, insects humming everywhere and thick wet noises of animals and plants like white noise in the background, but it was less frequent now.

Ami glanced at him, then back at her notes, unphased. "It suggests that she is a foreigner afterall, and not from a local tribe. It explains her coloration, but not much else."

"Are you joking? We don't even know what her real coloration is," he muttered. "This is fascinating and all but can we talk more about, Oh I don't know, maybe something important? Like what we're going to do once we get her back to the Leticia?"

"We'll find her relatives if we can, and if we can't, we'll at least get her back to her home country," she said matter of factly. "It bothers me though, that she is likely a foreigner. How did she get here and end up like this, and more importantly, why did no one report her missing?"

"Who says they didn't? Maybe she's been missing in some remote village in the middle of Africa or Asia for years, but nobody thought to look on the other side of the world for her. I mean, who would? But if she is a foreigner, chances she has relatives in the area are slim."

It hung unspoken in the air between them that if they didn't find a relative...

"What about medical attention?" He ventured.

Ami glanced ahead to see how far ahead Alejandro was, trying not to look Mamoru directly in the eye. "I don't think it will be necessary after all. My medical expertise proved effective enough, and I think with rest and time she'll be fine." She fiddled with the edge of the notebook in her hands.

Mamoru didn't push the subject.

A manmade bridge was the first sign of approaching civilization. Beneath it, a small river danced.

As they crossed the bridge, Mamoru and Ami both cast a glance back to make sure Rei was doing alright with Serenity. Ami busied herself with teaching new terms to Serenity for bridge and stream. The girl didn't seem uncomfortable on the bridge, and crossed without incident, even repeating the word "bridge" back to Ami correctly.

"Small miracle," Mamoru muttered.

Rei was humming softly and holding Serenity's hand, and had no doubt used the technique to steer her across the bridge.

"Careful Rei, she might get the wrong idea," Mamoru smiled as he wiped sweat off his face. It was useless to wipe the sweat off since it would be back in another few minutes, but the action was habit more than thought.

"Stuff it, Mamoru." Rei groused, kicking a rock at him. He cringed as it hit his bruised stomach.

"I think her culture must have frequent physical touch," Ami cut in before he could retaliate. Her voice softened, "Or she may have lost someone close to her. She's been very adamant about close physical interaction since the beginning."

"Something you want to share with the class?" Rei asked, a mischievious smirk on her face.

"No! I mean, I just-" Ami stopped when she saw Mamoru and Rei's lips both twitching into identical grins, holding in laughter. "Oh not again! You two really are incorrigable."

"Blame genetics," Mamoru said.

A gap in the treeline up ahead showed water, and the edges of a hut. "Finally!" Mamoru stepped up his pace, anxious to be out of the jungle. Alejandro was already disappearing down a hill, waving in greeting to someone.

It was thrilling to be part of a team sent to gather evidence for the potential archeological dig site, but in an environment as opressive and dangerous as the rainforest, it was sweet releif to be out.

Leticia was a large fishing village, sitting directly beside the Amazon river. It wasn't particularly advanced, with mostly huts for houses around the edges, but a few larger more modern buildings and houses towards its center. It was culturally diverse, a melting pot for indigenous tribes and nationalities in the area.

Mamoru gulped in an overdramatic breath of air upon exiting.

"I can't wait for real food," Rei said, stepping out of the treeline.

"Some tuna is crying in its grave," Mamoru said.

"Its grave is my stomach, and no it isn't. Give me some fish sancocho, anyday." She licked her lips in anticipation. Serenity was looking around at everything with wide, scared eyes.

"Better keep a good grip on her if you want that soup, she looks like she's ready to bolt," Mamoru tipped his head towards Serenity.

Ami and Rei glanced at the girl, who was rigid and frozen in place at the edge of trees.

"Food," Ami said, pointing to a shop not too far away. "Rest. Safe." She knew that Serenity hadn't been taught the word for safety yet, and she hadn't learned it in her language either, but she had to try.

Rei snaked her arm through the other girls, taking Serenity's hand in her own and humming softly.

Serenity tried to yank free, but Mamoru was faster, grabbing her wrist when she pulled loose from Rei. "Oh no you don't. We are NOT going back into that jungle to chase you."

She stared at him with naked terror, breathing fast and pulling hard on her caught arm. As she stared at him though, he saw something akin to recognition pass through her eyes, and her struggles slowed. "Yeah, I know you remember me...Its Mamoru. And you remember Rei, and Ami. We've only been travelling together for two days straight." Her brows pulled together in a frown as she stared at him. It felt like she was trying to see through him, but she wasn't pulling on her arm anymore, so he accepted it and stared right back.

Rei came over and re-ensnared herself around Serenity, this time using both hands like a brace to keep the girl from any more desperate attempts at escape.

"Food," Serenity repeated. "Bread," she said.

She glanced away from him at Ami when Ami nodded, reaching out to pet her blue hair.

"Yeah, I don't think she's not going to run anymore." Mamoru released her other wrist, turning back towards the village. "Let's eat, then we'll worry about finding her relatives."

When they headed towards a nearby restaurant with Serenity, Alejandro was no where in sight.

AN: So how many of you thought I was dead? 100%? Well I'm not. IRL stuff is ongoing (and a lot of it due to my forum/avatar/game website), but I have a feeling it won't be ending anytime soon. It is notably harder to write nowadays because of this, but I feel like I'm betraying you guys if I don't at least write at least a little bit more to this story.


	8. Chapter 8

Three days had gone by in a blur. No one in the village knew Serenity, or at least, no one would admit to knowing

her. In that week, the girl had returned to almost unbelievable vitality and health. She could speak broken

English, although she didn't know enough words for it be particularly useful. Almost everything she saw either

terrified or enthralled her, like a little child who had never tasted candy.

Ami, Rei and Mamoru did all they could not to draw attention to the fact the girl's life-threatening injuries had

all but vanished in a week. Since most of the villagers hadn't seen her on the first day back, few knew that she

had a scarring hole on her abdomen at the time. That scar was completely gone now, but Ami left the bandage on so

no one would know that. Alejandro had not reappeared in those three days, but one of the other villagers had told

them he went back to the big city, which was only a few days boat ride away.

Up until tonight, they had not seriously discussed Serenity, but focused instead on finding her family. But three fruitless days of searching put things into prespective.

"Our flight leaves in four days." Ami frowned, looking over at her desk in the hotel, where fragments of the

ceramics they'd collected were laid out on in bubblewrap. "We need to discuss what to do about..." she gave a

pointed glance over to Serenity who was asleep on one of the beds. The insects outside were making a low thin

chatter, giving the evening a pleasant warmth.

Mamoru gave a noncommittant shrug, sitting next to the sleeping girl. After a bit of a circus, Rei and Ami had

convinced Serenity to take a shower with them. With no dirt to hide her features, it had become obvious that she

was both older than they had first assumed, and much more beautiful. Her eyes had stopped darkening past cerulean

blue, and her hair was taking on more hue each day she spent in the sun. Right now it was the pale blonde of a

newborn. "She's obviously not related to anyone here, we've been through most of the town with her and nobody

recognizes her. If we give her to the local authorities, she'll eventually be outed for what she is."

"What is she, anyways?" Rei was leaning back against Ami's hotel bed, braiding her long black hair. It had taken

her hours to get all the dirt and sweat out of it after leaving the jungle, and now she was nursing it like a baby.

Mamoru shrugged again. "She's a liability. Or a gold mine. Or a time bomb. Whatever. The longer we stay around her, the worse off we'll be."

Rei rolled her eyes. "Selfish as usual. She isn't a stray dog we just need to put into a shelter, she's-"

"Some sort of alien-mutant zombie thing that none of us really know anything about." Mamoru said. "You can't just

put someone like that into a foster family, or give them over the authorities. It would end like a horror movie.

Liability, like I said."

Ami pursed her lips and frowned. "Rei could bring her with her back to Japan."

"Brilliantly terrible idea," Mamoru said.

"I don't think its a terrible idea," Rei said. "She is comfortable and familiar with me, and she does speak at

least some English now."

"Yeah, like a mentally-damaged toddler."

"I'm sure you could fluently speak a foreign language in five days." Rei gave him a pointed look. "Look, she's got

no one here. And no where else to go," Rei tied off her braid, tossing it over her shoulder. "I don't like it much

either, but we don't have limitless options. We've already established that we can't put her into the system, and we can't abandon her here to fend for herself."

"Which brings up another point," Ami said. "How are we going to get her out of the country with no legal papers?"

"And now we agree this is a terrible idea," Mamoru said.

"Our flight back to America is on a private jet, I doubt they'd ask too many questions. I could pretend she was

you, Rei." Ami offered. Mamoru groaned.

"Then what, we smuggle her out of the country back with one of us, and feed and house her like a pet. This is

sounding more and more like the stray pet analogy was accurate."

"She'll improve at English with time, or she'll find someone who speaks her language," Ami said. "Then she can find employment and take care of herself." Mamoru gave her a flat look.

Serenity rolled over and slung an arm over his leg. He looked down at the offending limb, but didn't move it.

"I still say we sell her to the highest bidder," Mamoru had a wicked smirk.

"Your mother would be ashamed of you," Ami said, in her casual conversational tone. Mamoru's eyes darkened and his

muscles tensed at the insult, but he didn't say anything. Rei shifted uneasily in her spot, unsure if Ami was being fascitious or truly meant the barb. "She's probably scared, lonely and missing her family," Ami cast a soft glance at the blonde girl.

"God this is such a mess. Fine, so she comes back to America with us, if she can survive the flight without giving

herself a coronary. We dye her hair black and pretend she's Rei. Don't you think they'll catch on when they realize she can't speak English? Rei is a cultural anthropologist."

"Rei is also a native to Japan. English is not her first language. I don't think anyone would question it if 'Rei'

had difficulty speaking English," Ami argued.

Rei made a rude noise. "I take offense to that. And they might buy it initially, but for a full transcontinental

flight? You'll have to pray nobody on board speaks Japanese."

"Even if they did, we can just keep them away from Serenity."

"When did we become charity case workers?" Mamoru had covered his eyes with his hands. "Do either of you know how

expensive it is to have another person in your life?" He looked at both women's blank stares. "Of course not.

You're on the receiving end as females."

Rei flipped Mamoru the bird. Ami stayed silent.

"Its very expensive to feed, clothe and house someone else. I've had enough girlfriends to know."

Rei let out a bark of a laugh at his last sentence, not bothering to hide her disbelief as she wiped a fake tear

from her eyes. "So have I," she said. "It isn't THAT expensive."

He considered the dark-haired girl. "I didn't know you swung that way."

"I never said I did." She fluffed up the pillow behind her, her smiling face unreadable.

"Let's skip right over the fact you basically just admitted you do," he said. Serenity took the pause to let out a

loud snore. He glared at her "its rude to interrupt."

"You mean like you did earlier?" Rei gave him a pleased smile when he glowered at her.

"Who takes her in, you or I?" He glanced at Ami. Ami suddenly looked like she wanted to be anywhere else.

"I live with my mother in a studio apartment...and I don't come home from the hospital every day." Ami said, quiet

enough that they both had to strain to hear.

"No."

"Mamoru..." Rei said, Ami had a look on her face that said she was on the same side as Rei.

"No," he said again. "Fat bloddy chance. I won't do it."

"She's got no one else right now. We are the only three people she trusts, and likely the only ones who know about

her unique...ability." Ami let out a small sigh. "I would take her in if I could but..."

"To experiment on her," Rei mumbled.

"You're can't be serious right now," Mamoru slapped a hand to his forehead. "You want me, the one person here with

a drop of sanity," he gave both other women pointed glares "to take in the girl who I have NO desire to sneak out

of Colombia in the first place."

"If you can't afford it I would be more than happy to reimburse you financially," Ami said. "I make enough money

from my work to live in a larger place on my own, I just choose to live with my mother for personal reasons, so I

can afford to help you if you need it..."

"I don't need money." He pulled a hand through his raven locks, letting out a frustrated noise.

"I can visit and help her adjust as well," Ami said. "I can teach her more English until she's fluent, or hire her

a tutor."

Mamoru froze as Serenity's hand flopped over a very personal spot on his lap. This time, he lifted her arm and

moved it back to her side.

"This is just such a huge mess. I want nothing to do with this girl."

"Fate works in mysterious ways," Rei intoned, putting on her best mystic face.

He threw a room card key at her head. She dodged it with ease and picked it up off the sheets and moved it to the

nightstand.

"You may be the cultural expert here, but this isn't fate or some religious experience. This is a..." he glanced at Serenity with an angry look, not sure what to say. "...mostly probably human person whose life we are deciding for her."

"You're right," Ami said. He tried to hide his surprise that someone was finally agreeing with him. "We should talk to Serenity tomorrow to see what she wants to do."

"We can barely convince her to go up a staircase or use an elevator. This is a girl who almost had a stroke when we turned on the bedside lamp." Mamoru frowned. "I don't think we're going to be able to have a real...discussion with her about what she wants. Wherever she's from, its obviously some third world hole in the sand."

"We'll try." Ami pressed.

"Can't hurt," Rei said.

Mamoru fell back onto the bed, uncaring that Serenity shifted and almost woke up when he did. Instead of waking,

she nestled up to his side much like she had to Ami. "We're going to need a map, and a lot of pictures." he said,

hit by a sudden wave of fatigue. They had walked most of the village in the last three days, and that was no small

feat. It was no wonder Serenity had passed out as soon as they returned to the hotel room.

"I have a map," Rei said, rifling through the purse she had carelessly tossed onto the night stand. "And Ami can

draw extremely well." Ami blushed and stuttered a the compliment, never having been one to handle praise well.

"My father was a painter," she said.

"Let's do it after lunch tomorrow," Rei set the map on the table.

"I guess its decided then." Mamoru closed his eyes and let sleep win.

AN: Yeah um...I wasn't lying about feeling guilty for not posting something for such a long a time. Two chapters,

one night. Also...plug plug plug ( .com)- my website is having a valentines event soon. Awful person,

who me? I proclaim that any reviewers get cookies and praise and love for life. 3


	9. Chapter 9

Swallowed in a dense cluster of grapevines and trees, a chateau lay nestled deep in the Lorraine province of France. Inside it, there were easily one hundred occupants, largely male.

From the master suite, a sultry voice called, "Marcel, are you planning to leave me to my own devices?"

A young man stepped out from behind the great oak door, wearing nothing but gold manties.

Before him, sprawled on a lavish king-sized bed with waves of inky hair spilling over the sides, lay a half-naked woman. She was easily one of the more attractive women on the planet, with a tiny waist and large bosom that were currently exposed. She motioned him closer with her finger, and he went forward eagerly.

As she reached out to pull him towards her by the string of his thong, a phone rang on the side desk. With an angry huff, she reached for it, lifting the receiver to her ear. "What?" she spat.

There was a moment of hesitation on the other end as someone realized they'd called at a bad moment. "You said to call if something weird happened," the voice said.

"I did," she affirmed, propping up on an elbow while the silk covers spilled around her.

"Something weird happened. I think you should probably come to Colombia and see for yourself."

She let out a laugh, "Oh, I think not. Tell me now before I lose my patience."

Another moment of hesitation passed on the other end of the line. "An excavation inspection team that went into the jungle a week ago, near Leticia. They just came out, three days earlier than expected."

She frowned into the phone, "That is worrisome. But not weird. What did they find?"

"Something, I'm sure or they wouldn't have come out so early. I don't know what, but you didn't let me finish. They went into the jungle with four people, and came out with five."

Her eyebrows shot upward, eyes widening and mouth parting in shock. She sucked in quick breath, moving to the edge of the bed. "Who was with them." Marcel was stayed seated on the bed, like a fixture of the room, completely forgotten. He didn't make any move to change this, but at the same time, he listened to the conversation.

"I don't know, I just know that they found someone in the jungle while they were collecting samples. They came back injured though. The village gossip is growing like wild-"

"Was it a female?" She asked, feeling her throat tighten with fear for the first time in years.

"...I think so. I can't be sure."

"BE sure!" She screamed, standing in rush and throwing a nearby vase at the wall. It made a sharp shattering noise as it collided with the wall and fell in broken pieces to the floor, but it didn't ebb her fury at all.

"I-I Yes ma'am," he mumbled.

The woman slammed the phone down onto the cradle with so much force it cracked. Clenching and unclenching her fists, she looked down at her palms to see aggravated red half-moons welling with blood.

She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath and letting it sigh out as she regathered her composure. Without turning around, she walked towards the boudoir, calling over her shoulder, "Change of plans, Marcel. Leave. And send Beryl in."

Marcel rose from the bed like a puppet, bowing as he exited the room even though her back was turned to him. There was a full-length mirror on the side of the room she was facing, and he felt better standing on manners than risking her wrath if she saw him leaving any other way.

A few minutes later, another long-haired woman, and one of the few female occupants of the mansion entered the room. Her hair was a deep garnet, falling down around her waist, although she had gathered some of it up into a braided crown on her head. She held a pen in one hand and a flip book journal in the other.

The black-haired woman turned, now fully clothed in an elegant business suit. "About time. Arrange for a flight to Colombia, as close to Leticia as you can find." She went over to a vanity stand, inspecting her appearance in the mirror. "As soon as possible," she added. She paused, glancing at Beryl's reflection in the mirror. She inspected her in the mirror, smiling at what she saw. "Two tickets. You will come with me." She dragged a painted nail down the mirror, not flinching in the slightest as it screeched under the pressure.

Beryl nodded but didn't react to the noise, pulling a phone out of her pocket and typing in a few commands. Putting the phone away after it was done, she flipped open the journal and scribbled a few notes into the calendar. "There is a private flight available in six hours. Your meeting will have to be cancelled with th-"

"Then cancel it," the other woman interrupted.

Beryl looked at her employer, pupils dilating as she appraised her physical appearance. She didn't dare stare for long though. "Will there be anything else?"

"No." The redhead reluctantly turned to leave. "And Beryl?" She stopped, and turned slightly to look back at the taller woman. "Don't make me wait."

"Yes ma'am," she turned on her heel, and stalked out of the room, entertaining wicked thoughts of the two of them alone on this trip to the middle of nowhere. It was almost too good to be true.

AN: Dun...dun...duuuuun. Jk. :) Finally some villainy/plot and not just mystery! Now I have to warn you guys, I love programming a little significant bit more than writing. So...most of what I write nowadays is for my website. Games and such, in lines of crazy. I doubt I'll ever be able to completely stop writing (in any form) but consistent chapter updates? No promises. But I'm a total bitch to reviews, just leash me up. So yea, if ya like it at all, review.


	10. Chapter 10

Unlike the others, Mamoru had known early on that Serenity had a wicked sense of humor. The scab on his leg from where she had smacked him repeatedly with her walking stick was only now starting to heal back over.

So it came as no surprise to him, that when the next day they tried to take her with them to lunch, instead she decided to pour a bucket of muddy water on Rei's head.

"I'LL KILL YOU!" Rei screamed, chasing after the younger girl. Serenity ran from her, laughing so hard she could barely run. It didn't take long for Rei to catch up and tackle her into the mud as well. They proceeded to wrestle with one another, laughing like hyenas, and the thought that this could be a paid sporting event crossed Mamoru's mind more than once as he watched them.

Ami had an amused smile on, but Mamoru was getting annoyed after five minutes of watching them. This girl was nothing but trouble.

"Alright enough you two," he walked over, separating them and pointing to the hotel. "Go get cleaned up again, then we'll get something to eat."

Serenity blinked up at him, blue eyes focused as she tried to pick out words she recognized. "Clean," she repeated. He nodded his head, pointing back at their hotel. She smiled like she'd won the lottery and ran off.

"Wait!" Ami called after her, replacing Rei as the chasing party to girl. "You don't have a room key," she mumbled to herself.

Rei was as angry as a wet cat. She wiped her sticky hands on her ruined jeans, glaring at Serenity as she ran. "This is war," she said.

Mamoru laughed. "Don't be overdramatic. I know you're miss priss," Rei turned her glare to him, "but you were laughing just as hard as she was."

Rei huffed and tried to cross her arms and gave up when she realized she was just spreading more mud onto her clothes. "I'll get even," she muttered.

He bent down and picked up the bucket, filling it up in the nearby river. "What are you doing," Rei asked, apprehensive.

"There is only one shower in the room," her eyes widened in shock as he dumped another bucket of cold muddy water onto her head.

"MAMORU!" She screamed, lunging at him. He sidestepped her, letting her skid in the mud as she tried to right herself again. Her eyes narrowed, slinging a hunk of mud at his head. He laughed, wiping it off his cheek when she nailed her target.

"Feel better?" He asked. She bit back a smile.

"You look like some tribal warrior with some war paint on," she broke out laughing.

He pulled his clean hand through his hair, shaking his head. "A cultural reference, I should have known." He smiled at her. "Come on, lets head back too. That girl hates showers, she won't be long."

"She really does. Acts just like a little kid who doesn't want to their bath. You should have seen Ami and I the first night, trying to force her into the shower. She was like a wild animal."

"Always is," Rei let out a small laugh. "I can't believe you two are going to try to dump her on me," he shook his head.

"She might want to come back to Japan with me," Rei said.

"Won't work," he said. "She's got no passport, she'd never get through customs or security."

Rei reached out to play with her hair, a nervous habit, but she stopped when she realized she was still caked in grime. "I could always come to America," she said.

Mamoru stopped walking, turning to regard her like she'd admitted she had three boobs. "Are you serious? You'd drop everyting, leave your whole life behind in Japan, just to help this girl? A total stranger?"

She shrugged. "Not permanently, no. But I could delay going back home for a while, and go to America instead to help her adjust or find her family." She turned, looking him over like he was a wanted criminal. "I don't think I'd trust you alone with her for more than a day."

Mamoru gaped. "I wouldn't touch her!"

Rei waved him off. "You say that now, but you're male."

"Well excuse me!" He said, throwing his hands up in the air. "What do you want me to do, chop off my bits? Would that make you feel better?"

"A little." Rei gave him a devilish smile.

"You're sick," he said, shaking his head. "Sick in the head."

"Hey, you suggested it." She smiled sweetly, waiting for him to open the door to the hotel for her since she was still sticky.

"Take off your shoes," he commanded.

"Oh. Yeah." She slid out of her shoes, making sure she didn't track mud into the lobby. It wasn't a particularly fancy hotel, but it was nice enough that it would still be rude of her not to remove her muddy shoes.

Ami was in the lobby, an eerie glow reflecting off her laptop and glasses. As they approached, she looked up and smiled a greeting. "I just finished uploading and submittnig a catalogue of our findings to the server back homeside."

"Good, how long before we'll get a response?" Mamoru was excited about the findings, but also anxious that he might not get the funding he needed to actually excavate the ruins.

"Around 24 hours," she closed her laptop lid, giving the mud puppy Rei a silly smile. Rei tried not to burn red with humiliation. "Serenity should be done with the shower any minute."

"Good!" Rei huffed, stalking up the stairs.

"How did you manage to get her to take a shower on her own?" Mamoru continued before she could respond, "No wait! Don't tell me. You dangled a carrot on a string in front of her and lured her in?"

Ami rolled her eyes, "She's not that bad."

"I beg to differ."

"She's actually quite charming," Ami said, folding her reading glasses and putting them back into their case. "She reminds me of myself when I was younger."

"In preschool?" He ventured. Ami looked at him, face expressionless.

"You really hate her, don't you?"

Mamoru let out a tired sigh. "I don't hate her. I just hate how immature she is. If I had to guess, she probably got herself into that tree because of her own stupidity."

Ami shook her head. "The more I talk to her...I don't know how to say it." She paused.

"That's a first," Mamoru said under his breath.

Ami smiled at him, shaking her head. "No it isn't. But, like I was saying...she describes her home with words that would lead me to believe its local, she's familiar with the forest and plant life too." She licked her lips, "But, and this is a big but..." Mamoru waited patiently while Ami gathered her words, in his head wondering what new bomb she could drop. "She she describes it as if it isn't near this forest. The geography I could get out of her-" she stopped when she saw a smiling Serenity approaching them, hair dripping onto the floor.

"We'll just get her to point to it on a map over lunch," Mamoru said. Ami nodded.

"Hungry?" Ami asked her. A loud rumble from Serenity's stomach answered for her. The girl blushed to the roots of her hair.

"That's a yes," Mamoru said, glancing at the stairs. "Should we wait for Rei?"

"I'll leave her a note," Ami said, pulling out a notebook and scribbling a message onto it. She stood and went up to the room, leaving Mamoru alone in the lobby with Serenity.

"So...how about that weather." He leaned back against the couch, awkward near the girl with the sudden lack of company.

Serenity looked at him with a puzzled stare.

"Right. Weather. Hmm." He pointed to the ceiling, and then made little rain motions with his fingers. Serenity smiled, nodding her head and saying something back to him in her own language.

"You're too stupid to know what I'm saying," he said, watching her. "but I hope you live near here. Please. For my sanity. Live near here." He focused his cobalt eyes on hers, begging and praying internally that she would understand he wanted nothing to do with her.

She bit her lip, trying to understand the many unfamiliar words he had said. He looked so determined, but at the same time so desperate. The sound of footsteps interrupted them as Ami came back down the stairs.

"Ready!" She said, scooping her laptop up and tucking it under her arm where she had tucked Rei's map.

"Okay, let's go eat." Mamoru turned to head out, not looking back to see if Ami or Serenity would follow. It would suit him just fine to eat alone.

Solitude was his preference, and if he had his way about things, he'd dodge this bullet of a girl and continue to enjoy his solitude.

AN: Yup, so valentines event is full swing on my site now which means no more chapter updates for a while.


	11. Chapter 11

It had only taken them a few minutes to realize that Serenity had no idea what the map was, and no amount of unintelligible hand gestures and one-syllable word explanations could make her understand.

"Home!" Rei jabbed her finger at the depiction of Japan again. A telling red flush was creeping up Rei's neck as she tried not to explode.

"Rei..." Ami put her fork down, ready to stop her friend.

"No, she's going to get this and she's going to tell us where she's from!" Rei glared at the blonde girl, who stared back at her with a somewhat frightened expression. Rei pointed at her, then at the map, asking "Home?"

Serenity bit her lip, looking like she might cry.

Mamoru was leaning back in his chair, eating his food and doing his best not to become as frustrated as Rei. He pointed to Colombia on the map, then made a vague gesture to everything around them. "Here," he tried. Repeating Rei, he pointed to North America on the map. "Home."

Ami bit down a sigh, pointing at the same spot. "Home," she agreed.

Serenity smiled, apprehension dawning and pointed one finger at America and another at Japan, smiling "Home."

"Does she actually get it, or is she just copying us?" Mamoru's hand itched to go through his hair for the hundredth time. He settled for putting his hands up against his forehead.

"She could be a dual citizen..." Ami had too much faith in this girl.

"Or an idiot." Rei folded up the map, shoving it back into her bag with extra force. "She was just parroting us."

"The idea was sound," Ami said trying to lighten the tension.

"Well, we still need to figure out if she wants to stay here or sneak back with us to America."

Serenity glanced between them as they spoke, lips moving silently as she repeated words she didn't understand.

"We could do the dog test," Mamoru proposed, an amused smile making its way to his face. "Stand on opposite ends of the hotel room and all call her to see who she comes to."

"But how would we know if she wants to stay here?" Ami asked.

"We leave her in the room, all walk out of it and see if she follows."

Serenity had stopped trying to follow their conversation and had returned to eating.

"Of course she'll follow," Rei said, taking another sip of her soup. "She's been shadowing us for days. She'll think we're just going to visit more of the natives looking for her family."

"We can't leave her here, even if she wants to stay," Ami said, her practical mind already having realized the truth of the situation. "She has no money, no job, and can't communicate with anyone who doesn't speak English. And even if they can speak English, she only knows enough words to barely get by."

"Please let her fucking stay," Mamoru begged, dropping his head onto the table. "I don't think I could handle having to take care of another person."

"We don't really have any other choice," Ami said, sympathy in her voice. "Rei is flying a public airline, so there will be security checks to go through and she has no identification. We're her only viable option." She finished off her rice dish, setting her napkin down beside it.

"I still don't see why we can't just turn her over to the authorities," Mamoru offered.

"Because," Rei said, lowering her voice. "There is clearly something unnatural about her and it would only be a matter of time before they figured that out."

"Maybe it was a one time thing? Not something from her but some miracle jungle plant she ate or something."

"It wouldn't have lasted for more than a week then, it typically takes only two days to digest food," Ami said. "And if it weren't something she ate, but something she drank or inhaled it would have lasted even less time."

Mamoru lifted his head off the table, giving the blonde who was still shoving food into her mouth a flat look. "I wish I'd never noticed that hair."

"Mamoru!" Ami reprimanded. "She would have died if we'd left her in that tree."

"Would saved me a lot of trouble," he muttered. Rei whacked the back of his head. He rubbed at the sore spot, glaring at her.

Serenity reached over to Rei's bowl, helping herself to the soup. Rei grabbed at it, but only succeeded in splashing some of it down the other girl's front. Serenity didn't seem to mind, and continued to drink the soup straight from the bowl.

"Try that when I'm not already full," Rei warned, folding her arms over her chest. Ami smiled.

"Great, she's a food thief too. She'll probably eat me out of house and home." Mamoru stood up and went to pay their bill while the other girls finished off their plates.

"Lets head back to the hotel, I want to go back to translating those glyphs." Ami pushed back her chair, stopping to stare at Serenity as she let out a loud belch.

"Why am I not surprised she has no table manners. This just keeps getting better," Mamoru had returned to the table to collect his hat off the corner of his chair.

When they re-entered the hotel lobby, an elegantly-dressed woman stood up from one of the chairs. Her hair was almost as long as Serenity's, but instead of blonde locks, it was obsidian. She moved towards them as soon as they were through the door.

"Serenity!" She smiled, rushing forward to intercept the girl. Serenity's eyes widened as she saw the woman, a huge smile appearing on her face. They met each other halfway, hugging tightly.

Mamoru, Rei and Ami stepped up beside the woman, who had another taller redhead beside her now. "Do you know Serenity?" Mamoru tried to keep the hope and desperation out of his voice.

"Yes yes of course! Serenity is my sister, I've been looking for her for so long..." the woman raised a hand to rub at the corner of her eyes. Her voice was thick with a French accent. Serenity was still smiling, already gushing in the foreign language to the other woman. The woman paused as she noticed Mamoru's face, but quickly shifted her gaze to the others before he noticed.

"So you know what's she's saying then?" Ami asked.

"Oh of course. Its a made up language from when we were children." The woman nodded at something Serenity said, replying in kind.

"That makes sense," Rei said, even while she wondered if this woman was lying. She had always had a knack of ferreting out the truth, and her instinct was rarely wrong. Right now her gut was telling her that this was wrong.

"Yes, Oh Serenity I'm so glad I found you!" The woman gave her a watery smile. "I was scared I'd lost you forever!"

Serenity, not understanding the string of English, just continued to gush excitedly in her language.

"How rude of me!" The woman extended her hand to the others. "I'm Nehelenia, this is my assistant Beryl."

"Ami, Rei, and I'm Mamoru." Mamoru pointed to the women in turn.

"Thank you so much for finding Serenity!" Nehelnia clasped both her hands over Mamoru's in a grip that was almost painful. "I am so grateful!"

Mamoru extracted his hand from hers, giving her a forced smile. "It was no problem, really. You have no idea how glad I am that she's found her family."

Nehelenia paused when Serenity said something, before replying in the same language, holding up a hand to pause the girl in her babbling and saying something to her.

Ami was studying the sisters with a scholar's curiosity. "Pardon my asking, but are you twins?"

"We are! Almost no one notices though, because of this," she held up a lock of her dark hair. "Only identical twins are very obvious in similarities...its uncommon for people to realize we're actually twins."

"This is wonderful. We were so worried that we wouldn't be able to find Serenity's family. Do you live in the area?"

"Yes, I own a villa not far from here." Nehelenia gave them a bright smile, and Mamoru couldn't help but notice that even with the disturbing familiarity of seeing that smile on Serenity, this woman's smile didn't reach her eyes.

Nehelenia snaked her arm through Serenity's, tugging the girl to stand beside her. Serenity didn't seem to mind though, and clung to her sister's arm. "You must want some compensation for your trouble, a reward for finding her?"

Rei glanced at the others, and noticing the gleam in Mamoru's eyes shook her head, smiling at the woman. "No that's not necessary, we are more than satisfied that now she will be with family." Mamoru glowered at her.

"Well, I'm late for a meeting, so I really must be going." Nehelenia gave them all one more smile. To herself, Rei thought that her smile was similar to that of an animal baring its teeth. "But thank you so much for finding Serenity!"

As she left with Serenity and Beryl trailing after her, Mamoru felt a twinge of foreboding.

After an awkward moment of silence, Rei spoke what they were all thinking. "Well, that was certainly odd."

"Fortunate, is what I'd call it." Mamoru said. "We're only a few days from flying out of this place, and her sister finds us in the nick of time."

"She was waiting for us at the hotel, so she must have heard we were looking for Serenity's family." Ami supplied. "It is odd though...that she would be waiting here at the hotel for us if she was late for a meeting...especially if she knew we'd found her sister, why would she not cancel the meeting or call to tell them she wouldn't be attending?"

"Yeah...and why didn't she ask where we found Serenity? Or about the condition we found her in or anything else? She could have assumed we were the ones that took her in the first place. It was almost as if she didn't care..." Rei frowned at the door they had disappeared out of.

"Maybe she was just so excited to find her sister she forgot to ask?" Mamoru said.

"No, I think..." Rei paused. "It felt more like she already knew."

Mamoru shrugged off the sense of dread he felt. "Better not to question our good luck. We've been searching for her family for days, and we finally found someone who knows her, and understands her. Serenity clearly knew her, and the woman knew the language Serenity spoke, so she wasn't lying. The resemblance between them was also clear. They were definitely related, so its not like we just handed her off to a stranger. Considering what the alternative was going to be, I'd say we got extremely lucky."

"Mamoru, Rei's right. If Nehelenia knew that her sister was injured and abandoned in that forest, then shouldn't we wonder if she was also involved in leaving her there?"

"No, because she clearly came here to get her back." Mamoru crossed his arms, his stubbornness rising. Now that he was in the clear to go back to his bachelor's pad in America alone, he was not willing to give up on the notion that they had done the right thing.

Ami sighed. "I'll postpone translating the ceramics and do a bit of research into Nehelenia, see if I can find anything. Just to be sure that Serenity is actually her sister and that we're not aiding a criminal."

"She's not our responsibility," Mamoru insisted.

Rei was still frowning at the lobby doors. "Still...I would feel better to knowing she's safe."

AN: Thank everyone for the reviews! I'll try to keep juggling this story with my website updates. You guys are competing with my website userbase for my attention (an unavoidable tug of war is going on for who gets updates more often).


	12. Chapter 12

Nehelenia walked ahead of the other two women, not bothering to turn her head as she spoke. "Schedule us for

the next flight out. Then schedule another flight from there to Nevada."

Beryl nodded, pulling out her smartphone and making the arrangements. Serenity was beside her, her whole face

strained with barely contained emotion.

Nehelenia turned back to her sister, 'I am so relieved to know you are alive.' She smiled to add weight to the

statement. Serenity responded the same but with four times the enthusiasm, wiping happy tears out of her eyes.

Beryl listened to the sisters converse with one ear while she searched for the next available flight. When she

was finished with their travel plans, she watched Nehelenia. Where Nehelenia was a visual contrast with pale

skin and black hair, Beryl had always been a study in bright colors with red hair and a sunny pallor. Her

employer had never been a warm person, and even in a language she did not speak she could tell that the

sentiments Nehelenia was offering Serenity were insincere. What bothered her most about the arrival of

Serenity was how fixated Nehelenia had become with her sister. Beryl had gone from being an occasionally

noticed assistant to a shadow following along behind Nehelenia.

And Beryl was not one to be forgotten.

Coming to a break in their conversation, Nehelenia reached into her bag to pull out her own phone. Raising it

to her ear, she listened to it ring before a rich male voice picked up on the other end.

"Hello dear. To what do I owe the pleasure?"

Nehelenia let a smirk curve her lips. "Can't a woman just call to chat?"

"Never with you," he replied, pausing a moment. "Am I speaking with Nehelenia senior or junior?"

"Junior," she replied without hesitation. "I haven't heard from my mother in months, since she left to do

charity work in Africa. You are right though, this isn't a social call."

Beryl tried not to show her interest as she continued to listen. She had worked for Nehelenia senior before

the woman that stood before her. The apple had not fallen more than a few branches from the tree. She was

beginning to have doubts about there ever being an apple on the tree at all. Nehelenia's mother, more so than

Serenity, could have been Nehelenia's twin.

"What can I do for you then?" he asked.

"Its what I can do for you, Diamond. I have a new subject for you...one I think you'll enjoy." Beryl watched

Nehelenia give Serenity a sideways glance.

"Oh? I didn't know you were in my line of business." He couldn't keep all of his amusement out of his voice.

"And I never will be," she replied. "However, consider this a once in a lifetime exception."

"I'm intrigued," he said. "When will I be able to meet this subject of yours?"

"Within a day or two at most. She doesn't speak English, though."

"Oh? So I'm expected to school her on linguistics while she's here? I usually have time to meet my subjects

before agreeing to take them, especially if they aren't native."

"I will provide you with a list of basic phrases," Nehelenia let out a sigh. "Although for your more...

creative purposes you'll have to teach her a few things."

She could practically hear him smiling on the other end of the line. "And what of the matter of payment?"

"Consider this as a favor to me."

Beryl had already gathered exactly what kind of arrangement Nehelenia was making. It didn't surprise or bother

her though, as assistant to Nehelenia she had already helped her make several other unscrupulous moves in the

past.

Diamond's hesitation didn't last long. "Is she damaged? I've lost interest in any subject that breaks too

easily."

Nehelenia turned to face forward, so the other two women wouldn't see the cruel smile playing over her lips.

"Oh no. I think you'll find it very difficult to damage this one."

"You can't get here soon enough then. I'll see you in a few days then." The dial tone rang in her ear as he

hung up.

She turned back to Beryl after putting the phone away, "When is our flight?"

"45 minutes. Enough time to get our things from the hotel and head to the airport. The first flight will last

last for almost ten hours." Beryl couldn't help noticing how Nehelenia's lips gleamed as she smiled. She truly

was one of the most beautiful women alive. It would only be a matter of time before Nehelenia noticed Beryl's

own beauty and worth, or so she told herself.

Nehelenia's sister on the other hand, while conventionally pretty, lacked all of the features that set

Nehelenia above the bar. Where Nehelenia's chest was ample, Serenity's was modest. Where Nehelenia's hair

accented her pale coloration and vivid eyes, Serenity's drew attention outward away from her face, almost

blending in with her skin tone. Nehelenia was easily six inches taller than Serenity, with a curvacious figure

and the defined lines of a could-be-supermodel. Serenity by contrast, was short and too small to have

noticeable curves, with smooth lines instead of definition. For the degree of difference between the two, they

had remarkably similar faces. Both were heart-shaped with bright light eyes and full lips. If not for the

similarity of their faces, Beryl would have assumed them to be strangers. To Beryl, her face was Serenity's

only redeeming feature.

The girl had taken that which she wanted most, after all; the attention of Nehelenia.

In that moment, she began to hate Serenity.

Beryl appreciated physical beauty above almost everything else. Its why she had moved to France from Germany

when she was sixteen, to live in the country where style and beauty ruled supreme. It was why she had studied

fashion and business, so she could carve a career out of her obsession. It was why she was working for

Nehelenia now.

Nehelenia, while she knew the effect her appearance had on others, was too self-absorbed with her own genes

and finessed taste. Beryl had seen her primping in front of her mirror for hours at a time, simply trying on

various articles of clothing with different hairstyles. The narcissism, while not unfounded, was mitigating

Beryl's plans of ultimately obtaining Nehelenia's affections.

Nehelenia nodded, already turning away again to head back to the hotel. The other two women followed, Serenity

struggling to keep pace with the two taller women.

When she lagged behind them by a significant margin, Beryl muttered "keep up." Although she didn't understand,

Serenity did quicken her pace.

Serenity was still shooting comments and questions to Nehelenia every few seconds. By the tone in her voice,

it was already wearing Nehelenia's patience threadbare.

As they headed to a different hotel, Nehelenia mumbled, "I do so wish he would consider relocating. I hate

that desert."

AN: I had to respond to one reviewer because they were so passionate in their review. XD Why do I need to ship anyone x Serenity, specifically either Rei or Mamoru? I haven't even introduced the full casting yet. :3 I can only say-you'll have to wait and see how it unfolds. A lot of characters aren't acting like their canon selves yet, and that is (mostly) because of something known as dynamic characters. Hopefully nobody is too OOC.


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